I Have The Wrong Name!

I am sure that everyone has been called by the wrong name on several occasions. Sometimes you get called a sibling's name, a friend's name, a name that sounds like yours, or the name of someone who looks like you. But have you ever been consistently called by the same name, that is not yours and sounds nothing like yours? I have! There is one main name that I am very frequently called. It's pretty funny how many times and how many different people have made the mistake.... and with the same name. So now you are all wondering which name it is, right? Or maybe you already know, because apparently I look very much like the name. I asked Rachel which name she thought I got called a lot, and she got it on her very first guess!

So drum roll please.... the name I am constantly mistaken for is..... Jessica! Sounds just like Stephanie, right? Uh, no. Luckily I like the name Jessica and I am not constantly called a name I think is ugly. And it doesn't really bother me that people get my name wrong because I know that remembering names is hard. It just really intrigues me that everyone calls me the SAME wrong name. You might think I am exaggerating, but let me share some examples...

It mostly started in middle school, and for very understandable reasons. My best friend's name was Jessica and we had all 7 classes together(completely a coincidence, we didn't plan it that way.) So since we spent so much time together, it was understandable for teachers to get us mixed up. But there were times when we had seats on the opposite side of the room and teachers didn't even know we were best friends yet, and we would still get mixed up. The funny thing was we didn't even look a like. She was blond hair, blue eyes.... and I was brown hair, hazel eyes. In our science class that we were partners for, the teacher would alternately call us by our first and last names so we had even more names to be mixed up. I learned to respond to four different names... my first name, my last name, her first name, and her last name.

Then High School came and we kind of went our separate ways. Since I wasn't hanging out with her all the time anymore I didn't think it would happen anymore, but I was very wrong. We had one class together in High School, and that was French class. We got to choose french names to be called in the class, and that was sometimes what we wrote on our papers and sometimes we wrote our regular names. Since my name is french I just got to keep the same name. But I was instead called by Jessica's name, or Jessica's french name. The same thing happened in our french class the next year. I don't think she ever went a class period without calling me the wrong name.

But I had several other things like this happen to me even when I wasn't in the same class or place as her. I remember a math class I had when the teacher was handing something back and she was calling Jessica to come pick it up. She kept calling the name, and finally I looked up and said "Are you talking to me? My name is not Jessica." The teacher was really perplexed as to why she'd been calling me Jessica, but it was definitely not the first time. And there wasn't even another Jessica in the class to get me mixed up with.

As this has happened to me on numerous occasions I have come to realize that it wasn't just the person Jessica that I got confused with.... I must really look like a Jessica. At a summer camp daycare that I worked at, one of the 4th graders that I was the counselor for would call me Jessica half the time, despite my frequent reminders that it wasn't my name. And there was no other Jessica working at the summer camp. Just last night, someone who was playing on the intramural soccer team with me was trying to remember my name. When she said "it's Jessica, right?" I just had to laugh. Mom and Dad, I guess you named me the wrong name...