Name Confusion Scott/Todd

Grant, we were talking earlier in the show about names.

Names.

Giving names to kids and the problems that come up if you give a particular name to a kid.

Remember that call that we had about Todd and Scott?

Oh, it wasn’t just one call.

It was one call that turned into multiple calls and tons of emails and phone calls in return.

It was such a strange thing.

I can’t remember if the guy who called us was named Scott or Todd.

So the whole premise was this.

A lot of people who are named Todd are sometimes mistakenly called Scott and vice versa.

Right.

That is, they have the given name Scott, but people for some reason called him Todd.

Right.

And we threw this out there because we had a caller who said, does this happen to anyone else?

And it turns out it happens to a lot of people.

Oh, my gosh.

A lot of Scotts and a lot of Todds sent us email and gave us voicemail.

Yeah, and we never could figure out why that was except that they’re short names, short masculine names, and they have that short O in the middle.

So even if you give your kid a name that’s perfectly normal, I would call those fairly common names, right?

Yeah.

There’s still a chance that they’ll be misunderstood.

Yeah.

I’ll never forget when my son was born, and I called my father-in-law from the hospital moments after the event.

And I told him the name that we’d picked out, which was Guthrie, G-U-T-H-R-I-E.

Great name.

And he says, I can’t wait to meet little Gunther.

I’m like, no, it’s not Gunther.

He’s like, oh, sorry, Jeffrey.

I’m like, no, it’s not Jeffrey either.

It’s Guthrie.

And like, Woody, Woody Guthrie, like that?

So, you know, you can’t win.

But every kid’s got a little bit of this problem, no matter how unusual their name.

Like, ask a Mary how often she’s called Marie.

Right?

It happens.

Yeah.

We’d love to hear your name confusion stories, 877-929-9673, or email words@waywordradio.org.