I admit it — I am one of those “damn foreigners”, and while I do not have the “funny accent”, I do have the “long, weird name”.

I don’t have to worry about spam mail, because it is never actually addressed to me. My name stumbles teachers and nurses alike, and yes, it was butchered at both my high school and college graduations. The amazing part is that my name is phonetically spelled, so by garbling it, the guilty party proudly declares that he or she has no clue how to read and/or speak English.

All of this I say as an introduction to a very short rant on this very topic, but with a slight variation.

While I’m pretty touchy about the pronunciation, I usually let the spelling slide, because the name is phonetically spelled, and thus is long and cumbersome. What I simply fail to get is why, or rather HOW, can a person horribly misspell my name in an email, when they had to look it up in the organization’s address book?

I just received two emails, both addressed to “Dmitriy,” but with salutations of “Demetri” and “Demitri”.

I just don’t get it.