Oh yes. I went to college with a Miller, Lawrence, and Thomas. All girls.
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I used to work with a “Michel” (French version of Michael). Most assumed they were dealing with a female “Michelle” until they met in person or spoke on the phone.
When I worked a contract in Louisiana I thought it’d be easy enough for me to pronounce my patients names since I took very mediocre high school French and had Cajun grandparents who I visited every other year. Well I was soooo wrong. Who would have guessed that Gauthier was pronounced Go-chA? Now on the east coast some of the Greek and Polish names trip me up.
A lot of times people might think that names like Arceneaux, Boudreaux, Thibodaux, Benoit, LeBlanc, etc. would be the ones that trip people up. But the one that folks tend to have the hardest time with is…Richard.
For non-Louisianians who need a clue…
wait for it…
…
wait some more…
…
it’s Ree-shard (vs. Rich-urd).
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Like my Aunt Benoit who lives on Hebert Rd? You know A-Bear Rd…
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I outed our son almost as soon as I joined CC. I remember the day he called from BS to complain that several of his dormmates were informing him almost daily of what his mom was ranting about “this time” on CC. And everyone at Choate knew my handle. Now that BS is so far in the rearview mirror, and there is no significant service academy cohort here, I think he’s back to being safely anonymous.
On the service academy forum, OTOH… 
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I always disliked my first name, which is used for both sexes, but I only knew guys with my name. Plus, there’s a slang term it rhymes with. As an adult, I don’t mind my name - it’s just my name. I made sure my kids had what I considered “regular” names. My in laws were upset that we didn’t give our kids “family” names … whatever.
My real maiden name is a difficult to pronounce (based on the spelling) Polish name. My dad changed it to a very simple English surname when my older brother was getting ready to start kindergarten. Then I married a guy with a last name that is constantly misspelled and mispronounced - and I took his name. 
My SIL has an ethnic name (first and last), from an area that inspires discrimination from some. It was important to him that his child have very American first and middle names. The last name gives away his ethnicity, but only to those who know the difference - he figures without a first name that screams “foreign,” his kid shouldn’t get too much grief.
Names are interesting things.
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I have a very common name, both first and last. I’ve had lots of interesting mixups as a result, eg, having my dry cleaning given to someone else in the area with the same name. My DD has a name that is uncommon in this part of the world but more common elsewhere. Her name has a special meaning and she is very proud of it and takes its meaning to heart. She does have a few nicknames, however.
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I guess they didn’t watch Gilmore Girls.
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Due to the location of my HS, one great skill I developed was the ability to pronounce (and spell) Polish names.
Names go in cycles. I clearly remember back in the late '60s when 2 cousins and a neighbor’s daughter had babies around the same time. The middle aged and older adults were horrified at the name choices because they were so “unusual”.
I’m talking about Jessica, Nathan and Joshua.
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I dislike my first name. It was very popular….in 1930 or so. I was reading a Reddit thread on names and someone commented that my name gave the image of a skinny middle aged redneck woman who sits on her porch all day. That was an uplifting day for me 
.
I’ve actually thought about changing my name since I’ve always disliked it even before I learned that lots of other people do too. I’ve been doing some genealogy and found an ancestral name I really like, but we’ll see (Thomasin, the feminine of Thomas). Lots of paperwork. Someone suggested that I should consider Annika, since Ann is my middle name and my dad was called Ike his whole life. I like that also.
The interesting names from my research are two Thankful’s, one Remembrance, a Freelove, a Mehitible, and one Pernecia, lol.
Reading the Reddit name thread kind of horrifies me bc child bearing aged women actually like old lady and old men names. Names like Harvey, Rolan, Cyrus, Emmitt, etc. for boys and Astrid, Bernice, and Winifred for girls.
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I have the same name as my MIL too! I have a very common first name (think Anne) and our last name (DH’s family name is easy to say — a common word with several other spellings). I’ve never really felt like an “Anne” but it’s ok.
We gave D22 mIL’s middle name as a first name (another classic name — think Elizabeth) and I think she likes it.
We named our older kid after another relative but they started going by another name which is fine (go by whatever you like) but does make me glad the relative is no longer around to know about the switch.
My sister has a super common first name like I do but went by her first and middle name growing up. Her middle name is my mom’s maiden name and a very pretty last name that can also be first name.
My brother is a III , named after my dad who was named after his dad and they have a really weird name. Middle name is an uncommon last name and first name is a really weird name from the Bible that no one has ever heard of. My brother is the oldest and I guess they gave me and my sister really plain names after what they did to him. I have never met someone I wasn’t related to with that name.
Yep! I hear you! I have a cultural name and that even gets mispronounced by native speakers! My Mom named me after a motherly coworker. My dad is Native Amer and Mex. So it’s not that.
I stick to the nickname because it was inadvertently given to me by my professors because they couldn’t remember how to pronounce it! Irony: They were speech pathologists!!!
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Our daughter’s first name is the same as her grandmother’s and great grandmother’s. Her middle name is the same as my middle name. Then s few years ago I discovered that it’s the same two names, including spelling, as KD Lang’s. You can Google it. 
My first name gets misspelled all the time. Once we went to a closing on a house and they’d misspelled it on the documents! It gets old.
Our previous financial advisor is male and his name is Carol. Spelled like that. That must have been tough.
Have any credit reporting companies combined your credit report records with those of someone else with the same name?
Presumably a variant of Carl, Charles, Carlos, Karl, Karol. Karol is the given name of Pope John Paul II.
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I took my Italian husband’s last name and it is mispronounced and misspelled 98% of the time. When at restaurants, we’ve learned to listen for anything that starts with the same first letter - or we use my maiden name, which is just 4 letters and is a very commonly used word. The exception is when the person calling it is also Italian - they seem to know how to relax and let it roll off the tongue.
My married daughter was grateful to take her husband’s very easy last name, which is also a commonly used word. Nevertheless, she finds that people often misspell it - including my mother-in-law, when sending cards and birthday checks. She also occasionally misspells my daughter’s first name, despite having known her for 29 years.
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I think it was his French Canadian background.
There are a LOT of people who have DHs name in the family. At things like family gatherings, if someone said DHs name, you heard “what, what what what what what what, what” because lots of people thought they were being called.
FIL was a III. They gave DH a middle name which the first three didn’t have. Of course, we were asked if we were going to name a baby boy after DH…but NO we did not. It is DSs middle name.
DDs middle name is actually is grandmother’s first name…but few people knew that because she went by her middle name (something we never would have used…sort of like Gertrude).
I happily traded my impossible Czech last name for DH’s simple four-letter last name, but people still try to add a couple of letters to it based on that famous character. At least no one ever mispronounces it.
In DH’s family, all first-born males have their father’s name for their middle name, so DH is DH FIL and son is DS DH.