SiteGetting the name right
Last week I was sitting in a doctor’s waiting room, waiting for my name to be called. After an interminable wait (I was feverish and in a lot of pain), the door opened and the nurse called, “Diane?” Not me. I turned back to my copy of People. No one else in the waiting room moved.
“Diane?” she repeated, a little louder. Still, no one stirred. She looked at the chart in her hand. “Diane BURRELL?”
Ah, it was my turn. “It’s Diana,” I said as I stood up. “I hope it’s spelled right on my chart.” She checked and it was. “Sorry,” she said as she led me to the examining room. “People are always messing up my name. I should know better.” (I forgot to look at her name tag. I was just so relieved to be making progress toward a medical professional!)
I once read or heard that the most beautiful word in any language is one’s own name. I don’t know how researchers know that — maybe they measure pleasure sensors in the brain as PhD. candidates call out words, who knows? One thing I do know is one of the most embarrassing things that can happen to a journalist is to spell someone’s name wrong in an article that’s gone to print. It hasn’t happened to me (knock wood!) and I wonder if it’s because I’ve spent thirtysomething years pointing out to people that I’m not the Frenchified version of my lovely Latin name.
Misspelling a source’s name in print has happened to many writers I know, and it’s embarrassing on so many levels. So my advice for the week: next time you’re interviewing a source, ask them to spell their name for you. Then repeat the spelling back. Even if you have their book in front of you or you’re absolutely, positively sure they’re a Thomas, ask. I can’t tell you how many times this simple step has saved my butt. I’ve learned a John was a Jon, a Thomas preferred Tom, or an “e” in a name had an umlaut over it. If a name’s spelling is particularly tricky, I let my editor know when I turn the piece in (so they don’t “correct” it, which has been known to happen) and tag it in my factchecking materials.
Have you ever misspelled a name in print? How did you handle it? What tricks do you use to make sure you get names right? Post your answers below. [db]
11 Responses to “Getting the name right”
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05/12/2008 Writing Jobs and Links : Writer’s Resource Center
Said this on May 12th, 2008 at 9:53am:[…] Getting the name right […]
John Hewitt
Said this on May 12th, 2008 at 10:03am:When I was the editor of my college newspaper in the eighties, we once got the sitting governor’s name wrong. That was embarrassing.
HisGirlFriday
Said this on May 12th, 2008 at 10:34am:Wow! That is amazing that you’ve never gotten a name wrong! I’ve done it a few times ….
I’ve recently started doing something when interviewing in person: I write down the person’s name on my notebook and then show it to them and ask: “Is it spelled like this?”
This does two things; they see it and say if it’s correct, but also it makes sure that it is legible - if they can read it, I know I’ll be able to read it myself later. (Others who have sloppy handwriting like me will understand what it’s like to not be able to read your own writing!) It works better than having them write it, since sometimes I can’t read THEIR writing!
Star
Said this on May 12th, 2008 at 12:50pm:Early in my career, I asked a woman her spelling. “D-I-N-A?” I asked. “No,” she replied with what I later decided was her idea of wit, “D-E-E-N-A.” It was the former, of course. I always ask–but when you spell, people sometimes go blank and don’t listen. Have them spell. Even then…
Robert
Said this on May 12th, 2008 at 1:10pm:Never. In J-School, that would lead to an automatic fail on an assignment, so I triple-check all names….
LA Writer
Said this on May 12th, 2008 at 1:12pm:I always, always ask the source to spell his or her own name. In addition to being the best way to confirm spelling, it also helps you resolve problems like when someone is Katherine on the business card but goes by Katie. And it helps signal to the source that you’re almost done, which sometimes provokes interesting last-minute comments.
Shauna
Said this on May 12th, 2008 at 2:05pm:When I was going on a tour in Cancun, I completely missed it when the tour guide called “my” last name in the lobby of a hotel where a large group of other tourists waited for tour pick-ups. After calling the tour company to find out why no one showed up for me and paying for a taxi myself to meet the bus in another location, I discovered what had happened. During the roll call, he said a name whose only similarity to mine was the first letter, S. When no one answered, I said, “Do you mean My Name?” and he laughed and said, “Oh. I couldn’t read my writing.”
wordwych
Said this on May 12th, 2008 at 3:18pm:After a thorough and deserved thumping from my editor for misspelling an interviewee’s name years ago, I briefly considered having “GOT NAME?” tattooed across the backs of my hands. Then I realized that was just a leeetle drastic, and I trained myself to ask everyone how to spell their name. EVERYONE, whether their name is George, Mary, Al or Fred. I’ve actually met a guy named Edd who spells it with two Ds. I’m sure there’s somebody out there who spells it with a hyphen! I get some odd “Huh?” looks from people who have ‘mundane’ names (Mary Smith, John Lee, etc.) but I just explain to them that it’s my job to make sure I have everything correct, and that, believe it or not, there are several different ways to spell even the most common names. (My favorite thing to say is, “If I didn’t ask, it would be just my luck that you’d spell your name with a I or two Es, and I would feel terrible if I spelled it incorrectly.”)
I have also got into the habit of noting to my editors that I have confirmed an unusually-spelled name, as I once had an editor change “Marye” to “Mary” on the assumption that I’d made a typo, and Marye was justifiably miffed that her name was misspelled in the piece.
Another thing I’ve learned is to get people to confirm their business titles for me. There have been a few occasions when my editors have provided me with contact instructions (’Call company VP Bill Smith’) and it turned out that the person I talked to had an entirely different title.
Meryl K. Evans
Said this on May 12th, 2008 at 8:19pm:Unfortunately, yes. Talk about embarrassing because I know exactly what it’s like to have your name mashed, pounced, and even genderfied. I knew how to spell an expert’s name — and I had it spelled right in most of the article… but she called me on one of my typos.
And this was for the only client where things didn’t work out… that’s not the end of that. It was my last article for this resource. Imagine, e-mailing the editor to point out the misspelling.
I apologized to the expert and told her it was fixed. Nothing you can do to make it better. Just fix it.
kerry dexter
Said this on May 15th, 2008 at 10:58am:I’ve done this only once, knock wood. Neither I nor the editors caught it. It was a major music business person who rarely gives interviews, but who had agreed to speak about an artist he was working with, who was the main subject of the story. Told the editor about the mistake after the story was in print, but neither of us pursued it further. several years later, I was invited to sit in on recording sessions by a different artist and Mr. X turned out to be the engineer. I sat quietly in the corner until the artist introduced us [Mr.X and had only spoken on the phone before], and later that day he came over to me and said “Now I know why I remember you, we talked about artist Y. That was the best interview! I usually end up sounding like an idiot in print. You made me sound like I knew what I was talking about.” No mention of the misspelled name…
Michelle Rafter
Said this on May 16th, 2008 at 9:15pm:I used to be a newspaper reporter and can attest to the fact that it didn’t matter what a story was about, how how badly the subject looked in it, the only thing they called to complain about was if their name was spelled wrong.
Now if I’m doing a phone interview that was set up by a P.R. person, I’ll cut and paste the name of the person I’m interviewing from the P.R. person’s email, then ask the subject if it’s spelled correctly. I also invite them to join my LinkedIn connections so needed, I can refer to their L.I. profile page for correct spelling, job title and and other details.
Michelle Rafter