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name-related puzzlements.

Posted on by Marko

There are two issues with my name that pop up with astonishing regularity.

The first is the number of people who read my first name as “Markos”. I don’t know where they get that extra S at the end, but it happens a lot, and it’s genuinely puzzling to me. Is it because Marco is not a very common first name in the US, and that most of the wearers of that name spell it with a C? I suspect that a lot of people read Marko and have their brain’s autocomplete spit out Markos because that’s a somewhat common Greek name.

The second is the annoying reliability of someone saying “Polo” whenever some barista or fast food counter person calls out my first name to let me know my order is ready. 75% of the time, someone will go “POLO! Nyuk nyuk.” Fifty percent of the “Polo” people at least have the presence of mind to notice my pained smile and say something like “I bet you get that a lot.”

NO SIR, I’VE NEVER HEARD THAT ONE BEFORE AND OH MY GOD IT’S HILARIOUS.

I swear, it happens so often that I have started giving fake names to the counter people. I’ve even stopped using my Panera loyalty card because it puts my name right on the receipt and undermines my attempt to squeeze by as “Mark” or “Mike”.

I really need to get an easy-to-remember pen name with maybe some added stud cachet. Like “Thorn Magnum”, or “John Ringo”.

Category: cultural oddities.

59 thoughts on “name-related puzzlements.”

  3. …Athough “Sileasia T. Duckforger” rolls off the tongue with a certain phoney euphony. (BTW, I claim that name; as “Silas T.,” it’s from my Hidden Frontier Commonplace Book and nobody else can have it. Kind of.)

  4. Riffing on FormerFlyer’s suggestions (and I DreamOf Jeannie), from here on out, I’m giving out my name as “Major Nelson,” and if spoken to about military matters, I will reply, “I’m not that kind of Major.”

  5. My wife now writes her name as “Chel-C” since she has been called by various nurses, clerks, customers and so on such variations as “ChuLISA”, “ChelSEAL”, “Kelsey” and my favorite, “Sierra”.

  7. My daughter decided she could get our table at Cracker Barrel a few years back. When asked for the name she told them ‘Daddy {my last name}’ and lo it worked.
    I have an unfortunately common and commonly mispronounced name so I generally leave ‘hiro’ or Jethro for my name.
    They still mispronounce it but it is more fun this way.

  10. Funny! We let the girls (6 and 9) take turns telling the hostess at restaurants how many people etc. because it gives them practice relating to people. They do a good job of it, and we are always there to take over in case there is a problem. Last weekend, we went to Cracker Barrel, and it was the 9 year old’s turn. When the hostess asked for a name, without skipping a beat she said “Cinnamon Bun”. The hostess just looked at her for a second, and said “Well, Ok”. 10 minutes later we heard over the loud speaker “Cinnamon Bun. Your table is ready! Cinnamon Bun. Your table is ready”.

    My kids are so weird sometimes.

    s

  11. Huh, yeah. Totally mind-auto-completed it and actually *remembered* your name as Markos… because, you know, I don’t read so carefully. Think it probably happens to nearly everyone with a name that is almost but not quite a common name, or that have variants.

  12. Oh, and I’m going to start using “Magnus Ver Magnusson” as my stripper name porn name nom de guerre . Just because.

  13. Re: Constantly hearing the same joke:
    When you’re in the uniform of a cop, you discover that 3/4 of the convenience stores and restaurants that you enter will hold at least one person who feels witty when holding up their hands and declaring “I didn’t do it!” Haw, haw, haw. I’ve given up the pained smile, and just wince and continue about my business.

    1. I used to ignore it but now I look them in the eye and tell them it was funny the first 500 times I heard it but it lost it’s “zing” about 1983. And Marko, I have a family history that shows my last name has been spelled 18 different ways over the years so I can relate. In fact, my great great grandfather’s headstone says Vuncannon. Being a pudgy kid, I was “Voncannonball” from 6 to 18.

  15. You have several different threads here:

    1. The White Trash tendency to make plural what is singular or to make singular what is plural. Do you notice that the persons calling you “Marcos” or “Markos” are lower class whites?

    2. Marcos=Hispanic name, common in Mexico and South America (Spanish and Portugese). Marcos is a popular first name in Hispanic culture. Markos is a common Greek first name. As you are a black-socked sandal-wearing foreigner/furriner, the persons addressing you as “Markos” are thinking of the Hispanic or Greek name which they may have heard while watching the little kids game of soccer or watching a CNN report on political turmoil.

    3. The insularity of Americans. People are too busy, lazy or stupid to get it right so they substitute what they know. Americans know “Mike” and “Mark”, Marko . . . not so much.

    Just ask Tam about being called “Kurt”, “Curt”, “Curtis” or, my favorite, “Kirt”.

    People do not know “Kirk” so they substitute what they know.

    Hope this helps . . . Marko.

  17. I’m going to guess that some of the “Markos” come from transference of the “s” from your last name. People who are not very familiar with you read your whole name once but when they need to recall your first name get it a little scrambled because both names end visually with the same vowel. Memory recall for those of us who are not afflicted with eidetic memory is dodgy and piecemeal like that.

  18. I use George Jackson Saunders. I even used it on an apartment mailbox for a while. Until Mom noticed it and said, “Oh! Living under the name of Saunders!”

    Bust-ted.

    M

  19. I like using “Leroy Jenkins”. Occasionally I’ll get a live one that’ll holler it out just right.

    1. So what were you before the age of 7 and after 18? Inquiring minds want to know. . . . .

    2. The XO aboard my first ship had a name that was pronounced “gay,” although not spelled that way. He said that the jokes fell off abruptly once he made O-5.

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