a reply to:
TombEscaper
I can answer this rather simply, because this has happened to me whole life. When I put my name into Google, it corrects it. When I write my name in
anything, it has a red line under it. Why? Because my name, in the really real world, is an ethnic name Gena. This is close enough to the common
name Gina that these search engines and Microsoft word and the GODDAMN WOMAN WHO MADE MY BIRTHDAY CAKES AT WAL-MART thinks that I'm trying to misspell
/Gina/ instead of knowing how to spell my own #ing name.
Ask any kid who never had a birthday cake or a personalized bike plate or a cup of coffee at the college cafe spelled incorrectly. Reba is famous, so
when you type in her name, it corrects it to the most /popular/ form of that name. Even if that's your real last name. Even if Gena is your real
name, it tries to make you Gina. Even if Jaxon is your real name, it tries to make you Jackson. These are names that hundreds of people have.
Berenstein is a real name, but it thinks you were searching for the more popular Berenstain, because there's a series of children's books called the
"Berenstain Bears" that it assumes you're searching for. And FYI, both surnames show up with the red squiggly line even though Gina and Jackson
don't. It wants to correct them both to Bernstein, which I can only assume is a more popular surname.
This is a well known phenomena and it actually can be traced back to racism. A Gina makes, on average, $10,000 more in her lifetime than a /Gena/. A
Jenifer makes $20,000 more than a Ginepher. The more ethnic the spelling of your name, the less likely you are to get a job, to the point that some
companies have started doing 'blind' resume screenings where the names are left off the applications. And if you have a particularly black or latino
sounding name, it can knock you out way faster than a spelling. Dr Carlos would be lucky to get a job with a Harvard diploma that Dr John could get
with a state college.
www.huffingtonpost.com...
www.thedigeratilife.com...
This is only confusing to someone who hasn't spent their entire life dealing with these issues. Reba has had to see her name, her /Irish/ name
misspelled so many times, even though Google tries to correct people, because English speaking people don't like Gaelic-derived names being spelled
like they were derived from Gaelic rather than Latin. They can't stand it. That's bad journalism, not a conspiracy. They should have double checked
to make sure that they were spelling it correctly. If someone wrote an article about me and called me "Gina", I'd be mad, but I assume that after the
50th time that happens, you just shrug it off or you would be /constantly/ angry about it. If someone can't spell or pronounce your name, at some
point you accept that that's their problem, their failing, and move on.
I was really hoping, from the human anatomy thread, that there might be something to this Mandela Effect thing, but I keep getting disappointed.
Don't tell a woman that she's misspelling her own name. You have no idea how frustrating that is. She knows how to spell her own name. /She's/ not
spelling it wrong. You are.