Are you talking to me?

[Linley]

Someone apparently circulated a memo the year that my brother was born that everyone in my parents' circle should call their sons BrothersName. To make it worse, they all go by the same nickname, at least sometimes. So we just call them my BrothersName, your BrothersName, etc. It was a popular name in general that year, I don't think my poor brother was in a class growing up that didn't have at least two or three kids with his name, AND it is a family name in my father's family so one the rare occasions we see them yelling his name, even first and last, results in multiple heads turning.

In comparison, I got off easy. No one else in the family has my name and there was seldom more than one other MyName in my grade at school. Recently though I was attending a social event and discovered that there were more or less three of us. (My name has two English spelling variants, pronounced differently. I am Spelling1 with Pronunciation2 because I have a non-English variant. So we had one Variant1, one Variant2, and me.) I've never had that happen to me before in my life and boy was it confusing.

[SoCalVal]

My name is very uncommon among women in my generation but was very common for women in my grandmother's generation so when I used to work in a drugstore when I was in my late teens, I met many 60-something women who would say, hey my name is Martha, too (not my real name).  A friend of mine also had a friend whose name happened to be Martha who was our generation.  Unfortunately, Martha was a petty thief so it really was better not to have people think I was her.  She was also gay so when my friend would mention Martha or he would introduce me to friends who heard of the other Martha, he would immediately self-correct with, "No, you're talking about the gay Martha; this one's straight" (often, they'd ask when we'd be introduced, "Is she the gay Martha" so my friend would say, "No, this is the straight Martha").  I'd never mind being mixed up with her for the fact that she was gay, but I certainly didn't want to be thought of as some petty thief who'd been in trouble with the law a few times!

Also, my DF and my older cat share the same name.  When I met DF, he introduced himself by the shortened form of his name, like Mike.  Well, when I'd go home, I'd be talking to him and saying hello to my cat, Mike so DF would tease me about whatever I was saying to my cat.  I finally started calling DF Michael in order to differentiate between the two (I'm the ONLY one who calls him Michael; everyone else either calls him his childhood family nickname, Mick, or Mike).  I call my cat MikeCat though.

[Allie003]

My dad's dog has a human name. His new neighbor has the same name (let's say its Bert). The dog jumped out of the car and went running through the yard. My dad runs after him screaming "Bert! Get your (word that starts with A that means human derriere) over here RIGHT NOW!"

The neighbor walked out of his garage looking very confused...

[Pinky830]

My DD's name has a common male variant, think Nick and Nicki. We have a neighbor family with the DH named Nick. Every time I say, "Nicki!" to DD, Nick thinks for a second I'm talking to him.