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.