Woman reminds us all to be careful with first initials and last names when naming kids

Naming a baby is hard enough. There’s always that bad memory you have with that one kid in grade school who you just can’t name your child after or you’ll forever be reminded of them. First and middle names are tough, but what many parents don’t realize is the first initial and last name combo will be a *thing* as well when choosing baby names.

Or even just the first and last name. For example, there’s a child at my son’s school named “Sky Miles.” While I’m sure Delta would love to scoop them up for an ad campaign once they’re older, everyone has to stifle a chuckle during the assemblies.

Samantha Hart shared in a now-viral video the dilemma she has with her first initial and last name when it comes to creating an email address at work. Usually, work email addresses are your first initial and last name, with a period between the two if you’re lucky. Poor Samantha Hart was excited to start a new job, as she shared in her video, but the excitement was shadowed by the crippling anxiety she felt with having to have that uncomfortable conversation with HR over how to spell her work email address. Her email is always some variation of “shart (at) (business) (dot) (com).” In case you aren’t familiar, please find the definition of ‘shart’ on dictionary.com.

So as you can see, Samantha hates it. “At every single workplace, I have received an email from HR the week before I started letting me know that my name does not exactly fit the company email structure as they would intend and wondered if I would mind if they gave me a different structure for my email,” Samantha said. So she asked her 30,000 followers if she should bite the bullet and reach out to HR preemptively and ask them for something else, or just wait for their reaction.

The poor souls who responded will have you dying of laughter. Chris Littman responded and said he’d been dealing with the same issue all of his life. As did Samantha Wallo and Sue Hartlove, to which Samantha Hart replied, “Bless you, shartlove.” There was also Charlie Umlover, and a woman named “Beth Schartz” who said, “Cries in my last name.”

“Thinking of you, Schartz,” Samantha responded.

“Mine is S.Litts and my husband is C.Litts. We’re Clitts and Slitts,” another poor unfortunate soul responded.

Others in the comments didn’t share the same name dilemma but knew of others who had. Like Paul Enis for example, and Tiffany Estes, Tara Watt, Charlie Umlover, Patrick Ecker, and Sam Adcock. “I used to work with a BAllsman,” Jennifer Kerastas added.

But the best response? “Always best to initiate the shart convo…wait too long and it tends to come out at the least opportune moment,” Andy Marks suggested.