A thing which is harmless but drives me perfectly nuts:

[moominmolly]

Sitting in a cafe where, all the way across the room, some people are having a conversation about someone named "Molly" who is NOT ME. No amount of talking rationally with my brain lets me tune them out.

Comments

[nex0s.livejournal.com]

I have that all the time. Except they are usually talking about being "cold" and I get really confused!

N.

[moominmolly.livejournal.com]

Heh! That one rarely happens to me since people don't talk about "molecules" that often.

[dreda.livejournal.com]

I think this is a very reasonable thing by which to be bothered.

[moominmolly.livejournal.com]

You would!

[desiringsubject.livejournal.com]

And now you know why I can *never* move to Atlanta.

[cutieperson]

oooh, yeah. so few people of my generation share my name that it just freaks me out when i hear it not directed at me.

[oakenguy.livejournal.com]

I never really had a problem with 'Brian' until I moved to Boston. Oy.

The strangest thing is when the "real" Brian is a toddler. "Brian, no! Don't touch that! Sit still Brian honey!"

[ceo]

Conversations about computer hardware sometimes do that to me.

[bluepapercup]

Honestly, so few people seem to be named Erika that I've hardly ever had this problem.

I bet it's super weird though.

[fanw.livejournal.com]

Back when people used to call me "myf" or some other abomination, I got used to turning around whenever anyone yelled anything that might conceivably be an approximation of my name. "Yvonne" "Biff" "Muffy" ... it got kind of bad.

[ukelele.livejournal.com]

Did you encounter a lot of Muffys?

[cacahuate.livejournal.com]

I hate that. Especially since there are about 20,000 other Mollys at my school for some reason, and I don't have many friends so they never mean me.

[ukelele.livejournal.com]

It's even funner when you have in your life answered to two first names, one of them overwhelmingly common. (You can, apparently, unlearn paying attention to your name, but it takes years, and it's still incomplete...)

Also, there is a very significant person from my childhood named "Mollie", but of course that's not a problem because, you know, different spellings.