I don’t have the most common name in the world. In fact, if I include my middle name – I’m the only one in the world with my name.
However, due to the fact that my middle name is near impossible to spell, for everyone but the people who live in the valley where it is a place name, I’ve gone by middle initial since the sixth grade, for the most part.
When I signed up for hotmail, and subsequently gmail, however, I omitted the initial. My first name plus initial is another word entirely in Norwegian. And I did not want to add additional punctuation to my e-mail address. So I skipped it entirely.
Only to get email within the past couple of years for women who are definitely not me, but have the same first and last name, or so similar that the people sending them email have mis-spelled the email.
One of my namesakes is a retiree in the Caribbean somewhere, and I get included on chain emails for all her friends. Another one is a jewellery store owner in Wisconsin, with at least two children. How do I know this? I got a proposal for sale of some diamonds a while back, additionally, she herself used a wrong email when she signed up to buy a baby crib some years ago. And her son is doing soccer camp this summer and I got several emails from the camp. Last summer he did drama, including emails from casting agents for auditions.
What do I do about it?
I try to tell the sender of the emails that they’ve reached the wrong person. Sometimes it works, and other times it doesn’t.
Anyone else have similar issues?
