Life of the Lintee Bean

I wasn’t particularly impressed with the name my parents gave me as a child.  It was too difficult for people to spell correctly (too many alternative spellings), and any nicknames garnered from shortening it were atrocious.  However, as I’ve gotten older, I’ve come to appreciate my name.  It’s not so unusual that most people can’t pronounce it – and it’s not so common that there are several of us with the same name in any given classroom, workplace, or other group.

At my current place of employment, I work with several coworkers and clients born in other countries.  As their given names were difficult to pronounce and spell, someone somewhere just decided we’ll all call them something else.  I was just talking to a coworker the other day – asking him if he’d called a client.  “What was her name again?”, he asked.

“Carol”, I answered.  “Well, her name isn’t REALLY Carol, it’s really something else, but we all call her Carol.”

Likewise, I have a coworker we call Eugene.  His name isn’t really Eugene.  I think it’s something that starts with a “Y”.  We call him Eugene.

So, I’m grateful that my name is Lynette, and my coworkers call me Lynette, and my clients call me Lynette, and I sign all my correspondence with “Lynette”.

I can only imagine how I’d feel if I started a new job and they said “Oh, your name is too hard to pronounce and spell.  You will now be referred to as Dances with Macros.  You’ll be reporting to Programs in C”.