Is intentionally misspelling my name passive/aggressive?

If it’s bothering you, and, clearly it is, you need to speak up about it.
I’d tell them that you have observed this situation and you want them to know you’re on to it.

Don’t get angry, be calm but clear and direct. Do not ask them to stop doing it, just acknowledge you are aware of the game.

My rule of thumb for emotional health is if something bothers me for more than a day or two I speak up about it.

This doesn’t mean I expect the other person to ‘change’ but, it does mean I respect myself enough to speak up in the face of manipulation.

To thy own self be true. ;-)

Or you can, whenever they misspell your name, misspell theirs in the response. Especially since you have already spoken to them about it.

When you misspell their names make sure you come up with something that is one letter away from being insulting or offensive. The great Fluther collective can probably help you.

That is passive aggressive behaviour but it is also childish. I would let them know I don’t appreciate their efforts and then drop it.

Well, I’ll tell you this much. When my mother called me by all three of my names – and there was no ‘spelling’ involved, it was all oral and it was usually at a fairly high volume – there was nothing passive aggressive about it. She was mad, and that was her signal. One of them, anyway.

Don’t rule out the possibility that this may be the work of an evil spell-checker. I’m not defending the behavior if it is intentional on their part, but is it possible they are unaware of either it happening, or of your disdain for it?
I would NOT resort to misspelling their name in return. It will make you appear childish and will most certainly insure that the misspelling of yours will continue. If this is someone who has known you for a long time, call them up and say “Alice, after all these years, do you not know how to spell my name?” A more direct approach would, I think, be appreciated.

I don’t see that as passive agressive, but more of an oversight while they may be upset or in a hurry. For instance, I very well know when to use “your” and “you’re” but if I’m in a hurry I may type the wrong one. Yesterday I even typed “knew” instead of “new”.

Small things that I let get to me when I shouldn’t are people placing dirty dishes in the sink rather than in the dishwasher, or slamming my car door too hard.

I don’t know about that, but my Mum used to change my name entirely when telling me off as a kid. Something like, “go to your room sonny Jim” Who the hell is this Jim? Did she have another child I knew nothing about? I dunno…mothers!

@ucme

It was “Mickey the Dunce” with me: “Don’t play Mickey the Dunce with me, young man! You knew exactly what I meant when I told you to take out the trash. I did not mean to assassinate your sister!”

The incorrect spelling of your name may not be happening for the reason you think. I have a couple of cousins who have kids who’s name’s are common, but can be spelled differently (and I know several other people with the same name who actually do spell these names differently) and sometimes I forget. Examples: Carrie (Kerie) and Caitlin (Katelyn).

It seems like it might be more helpful for you to figure out why you often find yourself “not in good favor” with these 2 people. If the friend/acquaintence is someone that you know, but don’t particularly like, ease that person out of your life. If she is someone that you like, but often have arguments with, find out why. And then gently let her know that it makes you feel diminished if/when she spells your name incorrectly (she may not even know she is doing it for the reason I mentioned above).

And you really need to find out why your mother in law sees you as “not in good favor.” Do you argue often with her? If so, why and what about? You may need to get your husband involved in this situation. If MIL is purposely being rude to you for no good reason, then he needs to get her to stop. He should tell her that spelling your name wrong makes you feel diminished, since she’s known you long enough and you’ve reminded her often enough how to spell it correctly. But again, both of these people may not be slighting you on purpose (at least not with regards to the spelling of your name). If they are slighting you on purpose for some other reason, you need to get to the bottom of it and solve that problem.

My first and last names sound exactly how they are spelled, but you wouldn’t believe the number of times that I have to repeat and repeat and repeat how my name is spelled. And I sometimes get correspondence from people who have known me all my life who spell my name wrong. I have noticed that there are a lot of people who are bad spellers in the first place and there’s lots of people (myself included) who start typing too fast and accidentally spell common words incorrectly. And I am guilty as charged of sometimes spelling my relatives names incorrectly because I know other people who spell the same name differently. I mean no disrespect to any of them.

@WasCy Yeah, mums are bloody great. Another one would be “Hey, don’t give me none of your lip young fella me lad.” Brilliant!

Why not just announce that they will be known as “Hey,You!” until they get your name right?
;)

@Kardamom It isn’t as though they’re so upset they’re in tears or ranting. More like I’ve annoyed them. The relationship with my mother-in-law is complicated. She is passive/aggressive in so many ways and jealous and possessive over people and things.

@VS I don’t think it is spell check since it makes it through most of the time. Example with my MIL:

MIL: Hi Christie, I have bought your daughter the prettiest fancy Christmas dress this year. I can’t wait to see her wear it for her pictures!”

Me: That is very thoughtful of you, but I didn’t know you were planning to get one so she already has a Christmas dress for this year.

MIL: Christy, Oh, did your mother buy it? I’m sure she enjoyed picking it out. I hope the store will let me return this one.

As for my friend, the most recent is telling her I won’t be able to come to her baby shower and she replied. “OK, Christy, that is fine.”

I’ve never heard of such a thing, how annoying!

Hmm. I have an alternate spelling of a very common name so my name is misspelled, a lot. Honestly, I got over being annoyed at this many, many years ago. Most people are so wrapped up in their own lives they have very little time to notice things like the way they are spelling someone’s name. I’m curious as to why you think their mistakes are malicious. My grandmother very rarely spelled my name right, but I know it had nothing to do with whether or not I was in her favor.

Maybe you should just let it go. If they are doing it on purpose and you cease to care you will take away any satisfaction that they might receive from spelling your name incorrectly.

And honestly, if I unknowingly spelled someone’s name wrong and they made a big deal about it, I would then do it on purpose just to annoy them. I think a misspelled name is much too insignificant to get so upset about.

Ignore it. Making any reference to it at all is playing the game with them, they win.

You should only make reference to it if it is shared with a third party, as the third party would need to know that the other person had to be corrected as they had used the incorrect spelling. Of course, if it is just a childish game, this won’t happen as they would not offer you the chance to show someone else how stupid they are.

It’s possible, in general, to have trouble recalling which variant of a name is right for a certain person, but your examples sound a little extreme. I am not sure I’d enjoy a close association with someone who so frequently felt a need to punish me. How do you know this is their intent?

One of my best friends goes by a nickname of Deborah, and I am forever struggling to recall whether it’s -y or -ie even though as a rule I am a champion speller. It’s not deliberate. They both look right, and I always echo her spelling when she writes first. She seems to forgive me when I mess up.

On the other hand, my late mother-in-law went out of her way to spell my name idiosyncratically: one syllable of my name sounds like a letter of the alphabet, and she liked to spell it with a capital letter in place of that syllable—something like SanD instead of Sandy. I hated it, and it took a number of gentle requests before she would stop it. I was never sure if it was part of her natural passive-aggressive style or not, but I suspected it was since it was just one of many similar things in her behavior toward me.

After thinking about it, I can believe my friend really just wasn’t paying attention.

I’m usually not a huge stickler about my name. My name does get misspelled frequently because it is the “ie” version of a typically “y” name, so I am used to that. In fact, I had a teacher call me by the wrong name for an entire school year – kind of like Sara instead of Sierra. I just laughed – she didn’t do it on purpose and I realized correcting her wasn’t going to work.

But my MIL… really? She knows. It is a pattern proven over the course of a few years. I’ll never mention it. It is such a small thing and she could easily deny it. Plus, I wouldn’t want to give her the satisfaction of knowing I even noticed.

I suggest you ask yourself why this bothers you so much.

It bothers me when people misspell my name, especially on Facebook. My name is right there, and you had to stick an extra L in? Really?