Andrea
Sept. 19, 2014

My parents called me Anthea. We're not of Greek descent. They aren't super into Greek mythology. My mother wasn't rescued from a burning building by fearless woman called Anthea. There's no significant reason behind the name. They knew someone called Anthea, liked it, and called me it.

It is particularly uncommon in Ireland, and Irish people can't cope with other Irish people having uncommon names.

Most of my fellow Irish people assume I've gotten my own name wrong, and help out by correcting me. I can tell them several times that my name is Anthea, and they'll still call me or refer to me as Andrea/Anita. "What's your name?" "Anthea." "Andrea?" "No, Anthea." "I think you've misunderstood. You must mean Andrea." Thank you helpful stranger.

This is somewhat forgiveable, as maybe they're assuming they heard it wrong, rather than I said it wrong. What is less forgiveable, is typing in my email address, which is literally just my name, and then addressing me as Andrea. To: anthea.middleton@... Hi Andrea, ...

I guess the assumption here is that not only do I pronounce my own name wrong, but embarrassingly, the company I work for assigned me a wrongly spelled email address. If in doubt, read the letters written on your screen doesn't work if you think the letters on your screen are wrong.

Lastly, spelling it. This is the oddest of all. "What's that?" "Anthea." "What?" "ANN - THEE - AH." "How do you spell that, A - E - H...?"

What?! If you're going to guess how to spell it, why on Earth would you guess with AEH? Your best guess would surely be exactly how it's spelled. "My name is Dave." "Oh, how do you spell that? D - X - 4...?"

Is it just blind panic? You know you'll fail, so may as well make it obvious that you're not even trying?

Hilariously, someone I know from college recently had a baby and called her Anthea. For the exact same reasons my parents did.

Have fun with that, tiny Anthea.

Leave a Comment:

On Jan. 20, 2015  Anna wrote:

A friend of mine recently referred to you as Anita, literally 5 minutes after having a full conversation about your website and me writing down your details for her. She read them and said 'so I'll email Anita at this address?' I won't mention her name, but you can call her John.


On Jan. 21, 2015  Jorina wrote:

Some people think there's a D in my name. Or an E. Or a Z. Yes, a Z. Also, I started a new job recently. The other day my colleague, who's worked there for over a year, asked me if I had read the email from Lisette. Since I don't know anyone called that I thought for a few seconds before realising I had an email from our colleague Lisanne. So I said "oh, from LisANNE?" and my colleague said yes in that kind of way that implied that it was me who had been slow to realise who she was talking about, not that she herself had actually used the wrong name. And she kept referring to her as Lisette for the rest of the day. I couldn't even bring myself to correct that level of obtuseness.


On Jan. 21, 2015  Anthea wrote:

Lisette probably never corrected her out of politeness and now will be Lisanne forever. There's definitely a time limit within which you can correct people using the wrong name


On Jan. 28, 2015  Teresa wrote:

In my language, Galician, one of the most beautiful names we have is Antía. It spells differently but it sounds like your one, although i am not completely sure about the accent. By the way, I love your name.


On Jan. 28, 2015  Anthea wrote:

Aw thanks Teresa! For some weird reason I like the name Antia more than Anthea.