Have you ever gotten someone’s name really wrong…

and for some reason they never corrected you ?

When I was about 20, after college I was taking graduate classes and met an older student, a German fellow, whose name I thought was "Horse".

Strange, but okay. So I called him "Horse", and he’d smile, but he’d always answer.

So one of our classmates, also older, took me aside one day and asked,

"Why do you keep calling that man "Horse" ?

"Isn’t that his name ?" I asked.

"No ! It’s [b]Horst[/b] !" she said.

Mortified, I asked, "Why didn’t he say anything ?"

She chuckled, "You’re a kid, he probably thought it was cute."

I thanked her for letting me know.

"No problem," she replied.
"Some of us were wondering if maybe you’d
found out something about the man we didn’t know !"

😳

DrWatson · 70-79, M

Your classmate may have found the reason he did not bother to correct you! 😂

I have a less embarrassing story. I once had a student whose first name and last name were each names that could be a woman's first name. It was not until the semester was over and I was entering my course grades that I realized that all semester long , I had been addressing her by her last name as if it were her first name!