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May 15, 2010

Lorine's Lament

Why oh why can't people spell my name? We're genealogy researchers. Shouldn't one of our number one skills be the ability to copy what is on a document. Copy accurately? Not write what we think we see, or expect to see, but what is there?

Let me explain. My first name as most of you know is Lorine.

L O R I N E

I have my name on the bottom of all my emails. It is on my websites.

I know how to spell my own name. Therefore, my question is - why are there a significant number of correspondents who return my emails with my name badly mangled?

I get Loreen. Lorrine. Laurine. Variant spellings of my name but not correct. Honestly, I do know how to spell my own name! If you see it in my email or on my website, trust me, I spelled it correctly.

I also get Lorraine or Loraine. That's not even my name! That's an entirely different name.

Then I get those who decide to give me a nickname such as Lori. I've never been called Lori in my life and I don't want to start now.

I find it disturbing that so many genealogists don't copy things accurately. How are they ever going to find the right ancestor if they can't get a name right?

And I haven't even started my rant about my surname of Schulze. It's spelled S C H U L Z E. That's right. No "T" and put an "E" on the end.

It's been a long week. Maybe next week will be better?

3 comments:

Miriam Robbins said...

Ooh, I feel your pain!

Anonymous said...

Same here - you would not BELIEVE how many people start hunting for "Coons" right after I spell out K O O N S to them! Or even *show* it to them, driver's license, etc. When they say, we don't have your (order, Rx, clothes, books, food, etc.) I always ask them to look again with a "K" ...

Shelley Crawford said...

I often have to ask to have the second 'e' in Shelley back again. And I'm not Shirley. And I'm not Michelle, either!!