Call me by my name

Existing in the world and online with a unique name

Caoilainn Lander

Oct 28, 2024

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I always wanted a different name.

As a child I wished that I was named Emma or Rose or Sophie. Something simple, clean and recognisable.

My name is Caoilainn, and unless you speak Irish, it’s pretty difficult to say it correctly without guidance. You can’t even take an educated guess on the spelling, either. It took me about 30 years to feel comfortable with my own name. Now, I love it because it’s so unique. It reminds me of where I came from.

There are upsides to having a unique name. It’s a great icebreaker. I know what I’ll get asked first in an interview. Plus, my handle is always available when setting up an account on a new platform.

Technology and digital interactions reinforce how unique some names are. I watch little red dots underscore my name in Word documents, treating it as a spelling error. Voice assistants like Siri struggle to say it, the outcome a mechanical mash of vowels and consonants.

Luckily, I can laugh those off. What I find less funny is online forms telling people that Tre’von isn’t a first name, that O’Connor isn’t a surname or that everyone should have both a first and last name even though some people have just one. We can build rockets that go to the moon, but building databases that support localised forms seems to be too much effort.

People get it wrong more than machines, though. Colleagues constantly spell my name incorrectly in emails and messages. I find this so strange because my name is literally written on the screen — you can copy and paste it. I sometimes notice this; the subtle differences in the font that make my name stand out from the rest of the email. I think it’s sweet. It means that the person on the other end cared enough to spend an extra three seconds to copy it from my email signature. A significant investment these days.

Then there are people who say it really wrong — repeatedly — and I have to go out of my way to say:

“Hey Martin, you’re actually pronouncing my name wrong. Have you not noticed everybody else is pronouncing it differently to you for the past several weeks?”

“Oh,” he says, his face crumpling in frustration. “Do you have a nickname I can call you instead?”

“No,” I sigh. “I don’t have a nickname.”

Unsure how to pronounce someone’s name? The solution is simple - ask! Asking, like the person who wrote me this message, is awesome 💯

But I get it. When you have a name like mine you have to be patient and understanding when people make mistakes. I could choose to get angry about it, but I would rather gamify it instead.

I started a savings pot on my online bank, adding in €1 every time my name is spelled incorrectly. It built up so quickly that I took myself on a spa day and laughed about the fact that my life is a never-ending loop of saying:

“No, not K, it’s C-A-O-I-L….”

All of this has made me hyper aware of spelling and pronouncing other people’s names right. I try to make an extra effort to include special characters when I can. I type the ü in Müller, the fadas on Bláithín, the ç in Çakıl, but sometimes I have to remove them to ensure that I can submit the online form or find the right user when I type @ to search. It makes me sad that these characters, these precious little embellishments, are getting rubbed out by technology. Modern architecture is beige and minimal, our furniture is flat-packed and now the heritage our names carry is being ironed out, too.

It’s not that deep, but it’s not that shallow either. Your name is the first thing that you’re given, so I think you should embrace it.

But most important of all — don’t make it easier to swallow.