Wednesday, August 11, 2010

The problem with "Kae"

No, this isn't a problem with me personally. Or my character. This is about my name.

I love my name. I think it looks pretty, and it's short and easy to say (though admittedly I did take much humor when the greeks I used to play with pronounced it as "Kai")... but there is a glaring problem with the name.

"K" is used a lot. A lot a lot. It's an affirmative sound tossed all over voice chat, both as "okay" and as the shortened "k." You can imagine the difficulties this can cause for a Kae.
  • "Okay." "What?"
  • "K?" "....wait, what?"
  • "Mmkay." "Sorry, I missed that, did you need me to do something?"
  • (chorus of affirmative "k"'s resounds through the channel) "WHAT?!"
I have been Kae for 5 years now, and I still do double-takes at some vent conversations. You know how you start to tune out and focus on what you're doing when you know a conversation is not about you, but then you hear your name and snap back to the conversation to figure out what's going on? Oh yes. Kae does that a lot. I have had to train myself to figure out quickly if it was my name or not, which is no easy task for someone like me who is a heavily tactile/visual learner!

Take-away lesson from this is, I suppose, that you should be careful when choosing your name to make sure the sound of it isn't used heavily in conversations, especially if it is short.





And by posting this, I know some of my guildies will probably start messing with my head in ventrilo on purpose for the next few weeks. I will pre-emptively state this to those that are already grinning to themselves about it: "I HATECHU!"

9 comments:

Kaethir said...

I get that even tho mine's a bit longer... because it's the same if you shorten it! ;)

It doesn't help that we have one excellent player in our guild who has characters named "Kayloc" and "Kaylissi"... which also get shortened to "Kay".

"Hey Kay can you *insert random task here*..." and they you hear two simulaneous "Sure" responses and wonder which one it was originally directed at.

Kae said...

Hehee! I spent a brief time in a guild that had a "Kay" and it did get super-confusing, so I can feel your pain! My current main is technically Kaelynn... but if anyone called me her full name on vent, I might not actually know to respond O_o

Saniel said...

There's a "San" among my non-WoW playing friends. Not one I hang out with often...a couple hours a year at most. But when we're all together and people start calling out "Hey, San!" I always come this close to responding before I remember that none of the know that's how a completely different set of my friends identify me...

Jasyla said...

Haha, that must cause some real confusion in vent.

Something similar happened to me a couple months ago. I spent a few raids doing all the Ulduar achievements with a PuG group and there was a warlock in it called Pamela. That's my real name. I was in a state of utter confusion the whole time. Everytime the RL spoke to the lock, I was like "huh? you want me to soulstone someone? dps skull? But I'm a healer!" before realizing they weren't talking to me.

Imabirdjk said...

While it may not be the "K" sound I struggle when people type out Ima, instead of I am or I'm in guild chat as well as vent.

However matters became worse when someone named Ama joined the guild xD
I always have to pay attention now.

Kayeri said...

Ha, I have the same problem, although my main is named Kayeri, of course it is shortened to "Kay" or even "K" in most conversations and raids, so yeah, it has happened to me, too. :)

Theladas said...

Kai is a totally legitimate dipthong >.>

Maybe we should all just imitate Alyae and say "okerie dokerie" more often? That'll probably preserve your name better. I may or may not stick to calling you "Kae-ling" when I can remember; Bus is another threat entirely.

Aloix said...

Oh, I can slightly relate.

All my 'raiding toons' have names that start with 'X', and people have often, esp. in vent, just called me 'X'. Well, since there's also an 'X' raid marker, there've been moments when I have to double-check myself when there are instructions for 'X to do such and such thing'.

Kae said...

Kill X.

*grins*