I am grading the first exam of my first year introductory biology course. The first question on the first exam is always a gimme, just to ease them in and lighten the mood a little. Here’s that first question:
The correct spelling of PZ Myers’ last name is
A. Meyers
B. Meier
C. Myers
D. Mayr
12% of the class answered “A”.
<sigh> I shall carry on with the rest of the exam. I hope the students don’t mind that I return them spattered with my tears.
What are you complaining about? That’s significantly better than random chance.
On the glass half full side, maybe they’re having a bit of a laugh with you.
On the other hand, maybe not.
It’s not their fault that you spell your name wrong.
Don’t forget the dyslexics.
Are they suggesting that
you’reyour doing it rong?Clearly you are a horrible teacher.
Wow. Twelve percent of your first year introductory biology course are Christianist dominionist whackaloon batshit-crazy trolls?
You must have inherited the “name spelled wrong” gene from some distant ancestor.
People read first and last letters so this 12% could be just that plus a bit of pressure during the exam.
But how many answered ‘C’?
Got the “s” right, anyway. So I’m guessing that they at least pronounce it right.
Glen Davidson
I noticed John Loftus mispelled your name (“Meyers” of course) in a recent post. Oy…
Next year make it true/false question.
If that fails, just put in a checkbox with the instructions, “mark this box to receive 1 point”.
Fail every student who messes that one up.
12% couldn’t even read the question correctly.
People always throw an s on the end of my name but rarely add an extra e. odd…
I should try that.
(I hate going by “BJ”.)
E. Myer’s
Maybe they were just Pharyngulating the question?
I know a guy with the last name ‘Clark’. Half the mail he gets makes it ‘Clarke.’
Next time you meet a person named Brian, ask him if he ever gets mail addressed to “Brain.”
Then, duck.
My maiden name is “Larsen”. For 20 years it drove me nuts that everyone wanted to spell it “Larson”. Then I married a guy named “Locke”, and assumed that everyone would spell it that way, and if I changed my last name the last-name-spelling problem would be gone. No such luck. Everyone wants to spell it “Lock”. When they see it spelled, they want to pronounce it “Locky”. I, too, am beset by an “E” problem!
Do you get emails from creationists addressed to PZ Myarse?
Perhaps there are eight students in class, and the guy who got it wrong is named Jim Meyers. That would explain why 12% of the class thought “Meyers” was the correct spelling.
Actually, if I would have had a test with that question, I would have been tempted to deliberately answer it incorrectly.
The answer is “none of the above.” PZ’s last name is spelled Poopyhead.
PZ could have offered extra credit for writing in the correct answer.
There can be only one!
*sound of sword swishing down*
Lynna, OM,
I thought that was his middle name?
My first name (which I don’t use except for legal purposes, causing people to assume my middle name is my first) is pronounced like, but spelled differently than, a rather common name so I have to spell it out every single time (and some dense people can’t figure out how to pronounce it, though it’s only 3 letters). My middle name is identical to a shortened version of a common longer name, so nearly everyone assumes that it’s short for that. My last name is rather uncommon, and nobody can figure out how to spell it just from hearing it. The most common mistake on my last name – inserting an extraneous ‘e’ in the middle.
Or is that what the “P” actually stands for?
Poopyhead Zaphod Myarse
That looks right
My last name is Fearn (rhymes with “learn”) and it amazes me the ways it’s misspelt when heard or mispronounced when read.
On the other hand, it always looks wrong to me when I see the word “fern” . . . .
Wait, this was a written test, so the answer was provided in the question, and people were still getting it wrong?
Ouch.
Yeah… but … according to Strunk & White (there are no better authorities) one forms the possessive of a name ending in “s” by adding apostrophe “s”, thus “Myers’s name…”.
No wonder the 12% got it wrong; they were flummoxed by what they read.
(MY dad was an English teacher, so there!)
@Tis:
Can’t rule out that the test writer is trying to trick you!
One choice could be Meijer’s, to really mess with them. (It is a chain store in the midwest).
The British can’t pronounce your second initial correctly, either.
That, or they figured it was a trap. Remember, he is the Father of All Lies.
My real name gets misspelled all the time, even though it’s IN THE BIBLE.
But, how well did the 12% do on the test. If the 12% got a 95% or better on the test this may be a clue for something. You give the correct spelling of your name in the question. this is college level.
did the 12% finish dead last in the scoring.
how many students would purposely miss this one question just to mess with the prof?
I spelled you name wrong just today. My failure was despite the fact that I read your blog almost every single day. Such is the life of the hopelessly dyslexic. I spell my neice’s name wrong almost every time. Names don’t have the benefit of spell check.
I’ve had similar bonus questions in my exams….I often have the last options as:
“e) I don’t know. Please give me half a mark out of pity.”
Nor do words that are correctly spelled but the wrong words. Damn. Please change the you to your.
Annals of Teaching at a State College, Chapter 1….
Rey Fox #36
I understand your frustration. Nebuchadrezzar is spelled exactly the way it’s pronounced.
You think you have problems? In Soviet Russia, name mispells YOU!
Seriously, though, I’ve always had problems with my last name. Thought I’ve been told that it is as common down in Monterrey (Mexico) as Jones or Smith up here, nobody ever gets it right. Some start it with an A, some add an L, some replace Z with S, and some are just testaments to the lack of phonics education in the US.
What’s really surprised me is the recent spate of misspelling my first name. It’s a fairly common name, given to a very well-known saint and several kings. It is longer than yours, to be fair, but still.
Rey Fox:
Mahershalalhashbaz?
jstackpo,
I hope you were joking with calling Strunk and White an authority..
Interesting enough, the problem with PZ’s last name already started in the old country:
(These variants are all pronounced the same)
– Meier
– Meyer
– Maier
– Mayer
– Mair
– Mayr
– Meyr
– Meir (Ashkenazi Jews in Germany didn’t have surnames until the 19th century, usuing patronyms instead. When regulations required them to choose surnames, Meir was chosen as one, as it was both a common German last name and a Hebrew given name)
Adding an -s was rare, but basically you could add them to any of the above forms
Telephone book statistics show the following:
Meyer (100.638)
Meier (44.996)
Maier (40.246)
Mayer (39.217)
Mayr (8.105)
Mayring
Mair (2.665)
Meir (1.061)
Majer (885)
Meyr (653)
Meijer (191)
Mejer (49)
Maiers (30)
Maijer (13)
Maiyer (2)
Any chance, PZ, you know the original spelling?
The reason why this name is so common is because it comes from the Latin “maiordomus”, the same source for the English word mayor. A maior was a administrator of a small village unit, and thus could be found everywhere in the German empire. There is also a so-called “Meyer hole” in Central Germany because there the administrator was called Hof(f)mann instead.
The variant Mayer is especially common in the Southwest, while Mayr sounds distinctly Bavarian. Meyer and Meier are more common in Switzerland and Northern Germany.
I checked the surname statistics: if you lumped all Meyer/Meier variants together, it would be the no 2 surname in Germany, after all Schmidt/Schmitt (“smith”) variants.
The only reason Müller (“miller”) is no. 1 is because this name doesn’t have any variants.
The smith, the administrator and the miller. The trifecta of German surnames.
The sad truth is that 12% of your class were wondering who the hell PZ Myers as they were taking the exam. True story.
I’m somewhat slow today.
I thought “what’s so bad about that, 12% isn’t that much and it’s a common mistake.”
And then I reread:
So yeah.
(On second thought: Maybe some of them suspected it was a trick question and the name was deliberately misspelled.)
Because my email address is tholtz@umd.edu, I have students who will send me emails “Dear Dr. Tholtz”.
Two hundred years ago, there was none of this “proper spelling” stuff. If the way it was written matched the way it was pronounced, that was good enough, even if three different people wrote it three different ways, or the same person wrote it five different ways at different parts of their life.
Just ask Shakespeare/Shakspere/Shakespere/Shaksper.
“There can ‘E’ only one!”
Nitric Acid,
I already said they were more or less pronounced the same. The “proper spelling” would indicate where his ancestor came from that passed down the name to him.
The Mayer was an important village office, regional chancelleries would probably mostly adhere to one spelling.
Ah, but this all begs the question: What is the historical trend of incorrect answers on this question?
PZ Myers is the nom de plume, or nom de blog, I’m sure.
The man’s complete name is Professor Poopyhead.
With only 4 choices (A through D) for the answer of that question, there is no E, Prof. Myrs!
See, though, PZ, I would pick one of the incorrect ones on purpose for the sake of irony. Then draw a puppy on the test or something.
That’s me, though.
But, but, you said “to ease them in”.
Clearly they were just dyslexically following your instructions.
Pfff PZ! It is a well known fact from the T.O. days that your name is spelled Nmjuhz.
Louis
I was always told that the “proper” Austrian spelling was the Maier variant. The “ai” spelling was the important regional distinguisher.
I bet you never covered it in lecture.
Also if anyone should question why I keep referencing German surname statistics:
– I remember PZ saying that his paternal ancestors were from Germany.
– the name Mayer/Myers, going back to similar offices in England, is extremely rare. Myers is the 942th name in the UK name database, and is mostly found in Yorkshire and Kent (as well as Edinburgh, but nowhere else in Scotland). Mayer is even worse, being 2440th. The office was just not that common in England, probably went under other names, but I can’t see any surname in the UK Top 10 that would derive from a similar office.
– German Americans anglicised their names, if not upon entering the US, under the impression of the two world wars. The various Meyer variants becoming Myers is a perfectly plausible scenario.
Echidna, have a look here: http://www.telefonabc.at/haeufigste-nachnamen.aspx
Mayer is more common than Maier.
Generally speaking:
– Northern Germany and Eastern Germany: Meyer/Meier
– Central Germany: so-called Meyer hole
– Southern Germany: Mayer/Maier, with pockets of “dropped e” towards Bavarian Swabia (http://de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Datei:Verteilung_Nachname_Mayr_DE.png&filetimestamp=20051027071833)
– Austria: Mayer/Maier
– Switzerland: for some reason, Meyer/Meier
I’m not sure about Meyr, it seems to be very rare anyway.
Also, a final -s is a patronym, i.e. “son of a village administrator”. In feudal times, a son of a village administrator would often become one himself too. But they’re all much less frequent than the non-patronymic variants.
You’ve been teaching how long, now? And this surprised you?
Don’t be such a baby.
My name is Marta. In a single week, the name is usually offered as Martha, Marla, Maria, Marie–even when I’ve carefully enunciated.
They may misspell your name, but they probably pronounce it right.
You think P-Zed has it bad, try growing up with my last name. No one knows how to spell it and everyone tries to turn it into Norris when they hear it.
Almost got ‘splody on the prof one fine college day when he called roll, mispronounced my name, and had the kid 2 chairs in front of me answer. I was so flabbergasted that I received an absent mark for that day.
#54: most terms there is one or two who mess up, so typically there’s a roughly 2% error rate. I don’t know what happened this term.
He even put it in the way the test-taking gurus advise you to answer. “answer C or the longest answer.”
While not the longest answer, it is answer C.
I also have to correct my claim that Müller didn’t have any variants. In the North, there is one called Möller.
Pelamun,
You’re right, of course. I do remember that knowing the regional variations of names and features of dialects was considered really important by my parents, and their German-speaking friends. Of course, in Australia, it didn’t have much practical application.
was that in Adelaide? From my time in Australia, I remember that S.A. is full of German Australians…
What you have there is the result of the donkey vote. Should’ve put the correct spelling first.
No, Victoria. This group was mainly made up of tech people who had come out in the 50’s for the Snowy Hydro Scheme in NSW, and then followed the electrical industry work. However, I believe a member of an earlier generation of my father’s family went to Adelaide.
I love these! [Starts charting.]
Lessee, Sally the Therapist and Akihiko must be married…making Robin the Chef and Danny the Nurse. And if Obaro drives the yellow car then the answer is…
The man was a lighthouse keeper who drew the short stick in a hot air balloon at the North Pole! Nailed it, as usual!
Fuck you, Mensa.
I received a hospital bill once that had my 1st and last names misspelled, and my address, on Hillspoint Rd in Westport, was spelled Hillsport Rd in Westpoint. I sent them back a note saying that this person did not exist, and that I would pay them only when they fixed everything. They fixed it astonishingly fast, as I recall.
I have no idea, with the wrong name and address, how it even got to me.
@pelamun, #45: I notice that you didn’t have any “Myers” in your telephone stats!
PZ, tell them that they won’t get ANY credit unless they spell your name right.
That may be a variant of the Hebrew Meir, meaning “bright”.
I am so sick of people blaming every problem on minority voters.
I’d initially thought that maybe the 12% just wanted to stir PZ a bit. But it counted towards grades, didn’t it?
At least your name isn’t Bertram Utthead.
I don’t know about Hebrew, but in English /ʤɒn ˈmeɪ.ər/ means “musical equivalent of chronic fatigue syndrome.”
gvgeologist,
I addressed the issue in 62: many German Americans anglicised their names, and for Meier/Meyer/Maier/Mayer the obvious choice was Myers.
Of course the name can be found in German telephone books, but there was no numerical value assigned to it. I assume that’s because the names were excluded from the statistics due to the fact that all bearers must be foreigners, either from the US or the UK.
The question seems to imply that the spelling provided is incorrect. So congratulations, 12% fell for it.
Be glad your last name is not “Knoepfler”. Either people have no clue or they know Mark Knopfler so they leave out the E.
Paul
This must be the test where I show up naked to class.
That’s what years of banging on them bongos like a chimpanze get you.
I wonder how well their answer to Q.1 predicts their overall exam score.
Rey Fox:
Did you go to middle school in the Puget Sound area?
Poopyhead Myerhole. Hmmm. It does have a certain ring to it.
kristinc,
in German it’s Meier-Loch. Sound even better, perhaps?
Some of us are just big down there.
I thought your last name was “Danger”
Scheisskopf Meier-Loch. Has a nice ring to it, actually.
(My German is exceedingly poor, so if anyone knows a more ‘friendly’ variant, in the way that ‘poopyhead’ is more playful word, please feel free to correct…)
I do actually know someone who has Danger as his middle name.
spamander:
maybe “kleines Scheißerchen” ? “you little shittiehead” ??
Here is what a well known contemporary grammarian and linguist has to say about your “there are no better authorities” Strunk and White (emphasis mine):
Later on in the article, he even gives examples from their celebrated book which show that Strunk and White did not display a very good understanding of what “passive voice” really is, while at the same time stipulating strong injunctions against it.
They probably already feel mired in this subject area, so “Mires” should have been an option.
Funny though. My name is often misspelled because of an “e” as well.
I wish I had a dollar for every time someone mis-spelled my last name “J-O-R-D-O-N”. I sometimes even get “G-O-R-D-O-N”. I’ve never heard of anyone on the planet with names spelled that way.
scottjorda, meet Flash Gordon.
There, you have now met at least one guy on the planet, albeit fictional, with a name spelled that way.
Scott #97: I’ve never heard of anyone on the planet with names spelled that way.
Not even Adam Lindsay Gordon?
One could be confused with worse, biologist wise.
sottjordan @97:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gordon_(given_name)
My last name is Fearn (rhymes with “learn”) and it amazes me the ways it’s misspelt when heard or mispronounced when read.
They do it with ordinary names, too.
My maiden name was one of the common ones for whiteys in America (it’s in the Top 20 for most common), and people called me every variation of it there was–but not the actual name.
It was very frustrating.
My current last name (via the previous Mr. Aquaria) is utterly impossible for anyone to get right the first time they see it. That, I can understand, because it’s rare. But my old name getting mangled, I will never understand.
I’m puzzled by this too. Gordon is a common given name in English, and those are one common source of surnames, originally as patronyms..
@ christophburschka
Extra credit: Who’s buried in Grant’s tomb?
;-)
Of course, it is really Mister Mxyzptlk.
Segal.
QED
@Pelanum 103
There are, of course, Gordons around. I think the pont is that no one on the plane who pronounces their name JORDAN (ie with a soft “J’) spells it GORDON. AFAIK, a “g” folloed by an “o” is always hard in English.
And, of course, that should be “followed”. Damn.
Some years ago a friend showed me a letter her father wrote her. Her name was spelled wrong.
Reminds me a bit of my last name.
The family got it when Napoleon decided he liked the real estate around here and after acquiring it found the need for last names to tax all those people using his property.
Needless to say that 200 years later the spelling of that common word has changed a bit.
Erulóra Maikalambe @28
(Twirls moustache) So you are Ed Nigma ! No, wait, let me try again…
P.S. May I half-inch your name for a new character in a game, as Erùlore, a Hunter/Stormwarden ? He or She (I havenae decided) will stab & electocute ass I promise !
aaargh ! ElectROcute !
Childermass @109
So sad and yet so funny with a dash of ohforf…
There is an article in a prominent psych journal that notes the items for “What is your gender?” (choices: (1) male (2) female) had a retest reliability of only around 95%… meaning 5% of the people are either confused or underwent a very fast sex change. So for PZ to get 12% on his name isn’t surprizing.
I guess you could make it even easier on them:
What is the correct spelling of PZ Myer’s first name?
(a) PR
(b) ZZ
(c) Michael
(d) PZ
Two letters! They could do it!
People are bad at names.
My name is Brad. I used to work at a newspaper called the Herald Sun.
I once received a package addressed:
It still tickles me, to this very day. (And the mail-room folks did well to get it to me).
As an undergraduate, I was given a multiple choice question on a test in which the last choices were
e. One or more of the above
f. Don’t know
g. Don’t care
Also, I thought that der Meier meant “dairyman” in German.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gordon_(name)
Are we talking about the 99% who make a basic grammar/spelling mistake, then claim they are dyslexic? Or the actual dyslexics?
Clue: one can tell the difference – the former always spell ‘dyslexia’ perfectly.
I think your ancestors must have come from the same bit of real estate as mine. Some of my ancestors didn’t take the edict seriously (since Napoleon would be gone in a few years, and then they could discard the name, right?), so I have a few people in my family tree with surnames such as Maneschijn (“moonshine”, as in moonlight, not alcohol) and Heetebrij (“hot porridge”).
It’s not quite the same, but my mother has a reputation for recycling and reusing birthday cards. I’ve been handed a few over the years with Happy Birthday! and then someone else’s name scratched out and mine written in. (On one occasion, I got one with “Happy
EasterBirthday!” on the front and a promise that a celebratory mass would be said for me at such-and-such Parish. Pretty sure that one came from an über-Catholic aunt and Mom passed it on to me without even opening it.)I mean no offense by this but
wow
I take it this is not a common occurrence in other families then?
carbonbasedlifeform,
yes and no.
In modern German, in the north and the east, a Meierei indeed is a dairy farm, and the owner could be called Meier, though in other regions it’s a Molkerei run by a Milchwirt (Milchmann is the milk man).
Historically speaking:
I. Meier (maior(domus)): village administrator appointed by the feudal lord
IIa. some of these became low nobility, probably taking on noble surnames
IIb. some of these became free peasants with relatively large farms, so the designation Meier in some reasons came to mean a “free man with a large farm”. In the north and east, these farms apparently often became dairy farms as well.
please strike “in some reasons”
I work for a company that has an office in Fort Myers in Florida, however it’s written as “Fort Meyers” in about 50% of the emails I receive, even by people that have dealing with the office for over a decade.
Brownian….may I guess that said part of your family comes from the same bit of real estate as did mine and Who Cares?
The, er, thrifty part? No, that side comes from the Balkans. And I think the thriftiness comes from trying to raise a family despite the other side (from the Baltic) hell-bent on giving all the grocery money to whatever charlatan could promise wealth or spiritual health (as long as it came with wealth).
Ah. The real estate I’m thinking of isn’t the Balkans….it’s where copper wire was invented by the happenstance of two men fighting over a penny.
Ah, so you’re from “Nearly Everywhere in the World as Described by the Slightly Different Ethnic Group Living Nearby.”
Do you know Dan?
And, yes, most of my family resembles that remark. (Although one cousin was appalled that I would tell such a joke about our family, despite knowing how true it is that our family is, er, thrifty, and demanded that I start telling it about some other ethnicity that has a similar reputation.)
I distinctly remember from talk.origins that Myearshertz had two “e”s. Did you go to court to change it?
I feel your pain. My last name is Meyer (pronounced Myer). Variations typically include (but aren’t limited to) Meyers, Myer, Mayer, Mayers, Myers (curse you, PZ!), Meier, Meiers, Maier, Mayé (?!), Meijer…
…which is particularly interesting because in some parts of the country, like the one I come from (the 3rd-biggest city), ei/ai is still pronounced [ɛɪ], not [aɪ], so that the spelling ei actually makes sense.
Oh well. I once had a teacher named Aichmair.
Or gaze in wonderment at what I discovered yesterday. Go here, click on “Amphibia” if it redirects you, scroll down to “Comments”, and look for the citations of my papers from 2007, 2008 and 2009.
That’s because that spelling would make no sense at all in German pronunciation.
…sudden attack of silent laughter gives split sides… ow…
Link doesn’t work… but I’ve seen the book called “the thrice-accursed Strunk’n’White”.
…Nnnnnope.
…or replace it by “in some regions”?
You lost your swooshy thingy?
Which might be behind the Swiss predilection for spelling it ey/ei