I’m touchy to the point of being scoffed at to ensure my name is spelt correctly, diligently spelling it out to consumer care executives (especially when it comes to NOT leaving a space between roy and choudhury), and then asking them to read it out, knowing I would catch an error or two.
I have been laughed at for OCDing about it, and have been annoyed at when I have ticked off people for getting the spelling wrong. Some friends deliberately call me SRC, fully knowing the breaking up of roy and choudhury would annoy me. And it does 🙂
But getting the spelling right is important. I remember from some years back I had visited a Shoppers’ Stop and was not carrying my membership card and to get my points credited I needed to find my membership number. No amount of searching with my surname at the customer helpdesk would fetch my details. Only because the helpful staff dug deeper and found out that they had recorded my surname as Roy Choudhury, and the card had got filed under Choudhury!
A more recent case. I needed to seed my Aadhaar card with my EPFO (provident fund) account. That account has my name spelled incorrectly (Roy Choudhury once again). I am unable to therefore link my Aadhaar to it. I applied to get the name correct, which was duly forwarded by the ’employer’. The EPFO office rejected it… for no apparent reason. The accounts office at the ’employer’s’ end suggested I change the spelling of my name on my Aadhaar card. Oh the sacrilege!
So, if you ask me, what’s in a name? I’d say A Lot!
An aside. Years ago, Calcutta University had standardised spellings of all names, creating chaos. It was a very wrong thing to do, and the result is there to see even now. All Roychoudhurys became Raychaudhuris. Thankfully I was not in Calcutta University.