Saturday, October 07, 2006

Name-related pet peeves I must slap down correct when they happen

1. When people pronounce the "s" in the middle of my name as if it's a z. (My real name, in case you don't know it, almost rhymes with "messily.")

2. My last name is hyphenated: Trill-Wing. The "Wing" comes from the husband, the "Trill" is my birth name. Yet again and again, people (especially students) think it's OK to call me "Mrs. Wing." WTF?!

I usually sign my e-mails with my initials or my first name, but when students address me as Mrs. Wing, I sign as "Dr. Trill-Wing." Sometimes they still don't get it. Over summer session I finally got fed up and sent out an e-mail about academic etiquette and about addressing people by professional titles instead of marital ones.

Additionally, when telemarketers call and ask for my husband by name, I tell them he's not available. At which point they always ask, "Oh, is this Mrs. Wing?" My response is always, "There's no one here by that name."

1 comment:

grumpyABDadjunct said...

I always answer telemarketers that way too! I'm not hyphenated, though, just my birth name. Both kids have my last name as their middle name, which we thought was easy and fair.

As for my students, ai yi yi! I get lots of Mrs. as soon as they find out I have a child, but this year I had an email adressed to Mrs./Mizz Grumpy. MIZZ!! I was blown away. In person a lot of them address me as "Miss" but I know this is a holdover from High School so I tend to let it pass. The funny thing is I would prefer that they use my first name, which is how I introduce myself to them, but I still get the Mrs/Miss/Mizz thing. If not my first name Professor LastName is my preference, but I rarely get that.

If I'm guessing your first name correctky I can't imagine why anyone would put a z in the middle, that sounds very odd.