How do I get people to spell my wife's name right?

September 13, 2007 5:14 AM

My wife's name is Kirstin. She's an emerging artist and we're working on giving her an internet presence for those who see her work and google her name. Here's the problem: How do we Jedi-mind-trick bloggers, reviewers, gallery assistants, and the rest of the public into telling them that her name is not Kirsten, Kristen, or Kristin?

This is really a two part question:
1. What can she do, when signing her name or introducing herself, to make sure people get the spelling right?
2. How do we googlebomb the "wrong" iterations of her name so they lead searchers to her website and to the good press and blogs that mention her? (The combination "Kirstin" and her last name brings up her website as the first hit.)

Note that her last name is pretty common and not prone to misspelling.

posted by Saucy Intruder to grab bag (31 comments total)

Can you register the domains for the misspelled versions as well, then direct them to the correct website?
posted by TedW at 5:20 AM on September 13, 2007

Maybe stop using it altogether and use the initial? Like, K. Intruder, or K. L. Intruder?
posted by beagle at 5:23 AM on September 13, 2007 [1 favorite has favorites]

Try creating a logo of her name that makes it unmistakable- red letters except for white Is, for example, and use it often, especially on business cards, letterheads, and the like. The more senses you can integrate, the more likely people are to remember it correctly. I can still tell you that Steve Martin's baby girlfriend in LA Story was named SanDeE*- an extreme example, to be sure, but I think it works.
posted by headspace at 5:25 AM on September 13, 2007

You need to do something memorable, yet simple.

How about "Kir.stin"?

Kir-stin?

KIRstin?

KirSTIN?

KirStin?

Kir Stin?

Naturally, you can play with fonts and color to further accent things. Maybe just have her go by her first name?

Whatever you decide, have business cards made up which she can give out when introducing herself.

But realize it's an easy to misspell name.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 5:34 AM on September 13, 2007

If I saw anyone pulling what Brandon Blatcher suggested I would certainly not buy any of their art. I guess it depends on your target crowd though.
posted by TheOnlyCoolTim at 5:55 AM on September 13, 2007 [1 favorite has favorites]

Realize that her name is easily misspelled, yes, but people are going to misspell her name no matter what it is. You need to fix the problem at your end, and attract all the misspelled googles to your site.

Not sure how you'd go about that, though.
posted by Reggie Digest at 5:58 AM on September 13, 2007

Think of something that rhymes -- this will help with Kristin vs. Kirstin.

Specify "two-i Kirsten" -- this will help with Kirstin vs. Kirsten. I knew the correct spelling when I started typing this, but typed Kirsten first; this is your real problem.

What rhymes with Kirsten -- is it KEER-stun, or KUR-stun?

Also - mentioning the alternate spellings on your home page, possibly in the META tags of each page, can help let search engines know that all are OK.
posted by amtho at 5:59 AM on September 13, 2007

A Kristin I once knew referred to a Kristen as a "cyclops." You know, only one i. I don't know if there's any way you can use that, I'm just putting it out there.
posted by doift at 6:08 AM on September 13, 2007 [2 favorites has favorites]

I don't know what medium your wife works in, but have her draw/paint/scult/decoupage two eyes looking out at you. Then get a quality digital repro of them and make the following business card/website front page:


< .> < .>
kirstin
with two Is
kirstin intruder
[e-mail]
posted by blueshammer at 6:10 AM on September 13, 2007 [2 favorites has favorites]

I guess one way to Jedi-mind-trick bloggers, reviewers, gallery assistants into noticing the spelling is to make an announcement when the site goes live. Email everyone who you think might be interested and have a small entreaty below the heading asking folks to note the spelling.

You know...
--------------------------------
*Announcing Kirstin Intruder's Gallery site*

[please note the spelling of KIrstIn!]

Kirstin Intruder is an artist........blah blah blah

Go see the site!
-------------------------------

I also like headspace's logo suggestion.
posted by peacay at 6:13 AM on September 13, 2007

My name is Karsten, I am a man, and growing up in America I was always addressed as Kirsten, Kristen, Kristin, etc. People will spell the name wrong no matter what you do.

Blueshammer has a good idea if she wants to make the spelling a conspicuous part of her self-presentation...but she probably doesn't.

Can you put all the misspellings in tiny print on her website so that they come up on google? You could put something like "The artist's name is not Kristen Intruder, Kirsten Intruder....." on a corner of the site real tiny, so that it's not conspicuous, and yet anyone googling Kristen Intruder will get directed there.

Or: does she have a remarkable middle name? Googling "Kristen Saucy Intruder" should get you to Kirstin Saucy Intruder.
posted by creasy boy at 6:22 AM on September 13, 2007

Go by something other than Kirsten. Okay, you see how I misspelled it? I'm a pretty sharp guy and I read this whole thread, but I still misspelled it - and not intentionally. Does she have a middle or last name she can use instead? Even comedian Mike Myers gets his name spelled as Meyers in popular media sometimes; it's a problem that you'll have to deal with on your end.
posted by Optimus Chyme at 6:22 AM on September 13, 2007

People will misspell it no matter what. Personally, I would come up with a unique phrase for the dot-com name (something snappy that returns no results if you put in quotation marks on google)... That will be much easier to remember than a person's name.

In addition, you could always buy google ads of the various misspellings. Unless the artworld is filled with insidious types, they shouldn't cost you that much.
posted by drezdn at 6:42 AM on September 13, 2007

Make the i's really distinctive. Hearts as the 'dot' on the i's? In print, make the i's fire-engine red so they stand out?

I like blueshammer's idea a lot, too.

Maybe you could use eyeballs to dot the i's... THAT would be memorable... But probably way too creepy.
posted by fogster at 6:59 AM on September 13, 2007 [1 favorite has favorites]

Another vote for the rhymes. Burstin'? "First in" would make the two i's more intuitive. But I don't know how to communicate this without being cheezy: ("Kirstin's works are burstin' with color, and first in demand!")

Or you could name her company something easy to spell. :) Spitfire Art, by Kirstin Intruder.
posted by salvia at 7:42 AM on September 13, 2007

I agree that the best strategy would be to decouple her web presence from her name with some kind of memorable and relevant domain name and web-alias.

As for business card, etc., she could consider a logo that does something like this:

_____K_____
__S T I N____
_____R_____

A bit cheesy, yes, but it gets the point across.
posted by googly at 7:42 AM on September 13, 2007

When I'm writing articles (which I do as part of my marketing job, not as a journalist), I do like to go to the subject's website and make sure I've got spellings and dates and stuff correct. So I would make sure that her website has content that would be helpful to bloggers, reviewers, gallery assistants, and the rest of the public -- a reasonably fleshed-out bio, maybe press releases, dates of exhibitions in the past and future, reviews, etc. -- so that they're rewarded when they do the same.

Include the URL on her business cards and in any press releases, and use her full name as the URL -- I would think that any reviewer, etc. who includes the URL would notice if it's spelled differently than the name they've been typing. And yes, try to buy domains with the common misspellings and have them redirect.
posted by occhiblu at 7:43 AM on September 13, 2007

Actually, the problem is second-hand transfer of information. For example, in her recent group show, the press package put together by the gallery spelled her name right. But then the person tasked with creating the wall sign transcribed it incorrectly. You're right that ultimately it's impossible to make a mind-burn. My name is Jon, and I get "John" all the time. But this happens to Jon Stewart just as often (proportionately speaking).

Her website is her first name backwards. Not to be a total pimp, but it's just been posted to Mefi Projects, in case anyone is interested. This seems to work pretty well because "nitsrik" is intuitively easier to spell than "kirstin." Also, we've written her name on the website in a font that emphasizes the skinniness of the "I"s. When I see it the absence of the letter E is conspicuous, which I like.
posted by Saucy Intruder at 8:22 AM on September 13, 2007

Brendan Blatcher's recommendation reminds me of SanDeE*. So yeah, don't do that.
posted by miss lynnster at 9:01 AM on September 13, 2007

This should be your logo.
posted by fidelity at 9:16 AM on September 13, 2007

question 1 is really hard to do: people will misspell. However, the good news is that that will take care of question 2. Most people who link to the website will make sure the link is correct, so she'll end up with reviews or articles that link to her like kirsten lastname and because google assigns value to the link text, that will help google searchers for kirsten lastname end up at your website.
posted by davar at 9:32 AM on September 13, 2007

And FWIW, I read that as "Stinkir." Which might be bad. Unless she's smelly and in which case it might be a polite warning to potential customers. :)

I'll tell you, here's what I did... I found a nickname for myself. Lynnster. A few people called me it at work in the 90s and it was catchy. So I bought domain names for all possible spellings of my real name and then pointed them all to a domain of my nickname. People never remember if my real name has double or single letters, they don't want to think about it. Lynnster cuts all of the hassle. It's easy to remember, it's friendly. Then I bought a toll free number that spelled it out & forwarded that to my cel phone through gotvmail.com. So basically, I branded myself. It really made life easier for everyone, including me.
posted by miss lynnster at 9:36 AM on September 13, 2007

Also, we've written her name on the website in a font that emphasizes the skinniness of the "I"s

Note, that will not help. Also, when viewing the images on her website, her name is not mention AT ALL. The name and materials are mentioned, along the name of the program used to build the gallery, but not her actual name.

That should not be your logo, the addition of the eyes and the style of the font makes her look like a fourteen year old girl.

Based on your description of how her name was wrongly transcribed, I'd take a photo of the wall, a copy of the press packet where it was spelled right and every time she had a show take the materials to the gallery and be a bit of an asshole to remind future galleries to get it right.

Or to take miss lynnster's misspelling of my name as an example, ignore it or turn it into a talking point.

and miss lynnster's suggestion about branding is good.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 9:41 AM on September 13, 2007

There are two things you want people to remember: the two i's and the i-r sequence. There are graphical ways to integrate both these concerns. F'rinstance, if you took something like

K |R S T |N

in block letters and blended the color from the I's to their right-hand letters (so the transition would go white-K, red-I to pink-border to white-R, white-S, etc.), the distinctive vertical borders would be...I guess an extralinguistic mnemonic is what I'd call it.
posted by kittyprecious at 12:50 PM on September 13, 2007

Choosing Maxx Klaxon as a nom de musique has invited numerous misspellings: Max Klaxxon, Maxx Klaxxon, Max Klaxon, etc.

During my live shows I try to spell out my URL at least once, in an easy-to-remember cadence: "K-L-A, X-O-N, dot T-V."

I have the various alternate spellings in the metadata of my web pages. But I haven't bought any alternative domain names or anything like that. I pretty much trust Google to send people to the right place.

Also, I have Google Alerts set up to send me e-mail once a week with any instances of any of the misspellings that the Google spider finds. At least that way I can track and potentially correct them.

P.S. Dear Dave Faris: This post is not intended as self promotion
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 1:40 PM on September 13, 2007

ah, the Schwarzenegger problem.

I fear she needs to establish some name recognition. people will eventually get it but that's just what it takes. everything else, like ooobvious logos, are just band-aids. I do like the idea of redirecting misspelled URLs to her real one though.
posted by krautland at 2:04 PM on September 13, 2007

"Kirstin like Kirsten Dunst, but with two I's." Association is the key to memory.

I would register both the correct and incorrect variations of her name for URL. kirstinmusic.com and kirstenmusic.com. Then redirect to the correct variation.
posted by nemoorange at 2:27 PM on September 13, 2007

How about something totally different? Like Kirstin Intruder of Saucy Intruder Studio or something like that? That way people have a not-so-easy to misspell way of finding your web site as well.
posted by edjusted at 3:35 PM on September 13, 2007

My name is Christine, and I get called Christina and Christin lots. I also have a very common and mis-spellable last name, so I feel your wife's pain.

If I were her I'd print business cards with her name printed in two colors. For example, black consonants and red vowels. If you do it in both her first and last name it'll make it look like she's trying to be artsy when it really just makes the two i's stand out.
posted by christinetheslp at 3:48 PM on September 13, 2007

@%#$! Sn

for the scientific community.
posted by kanemano at 7:42 PM on September 13, 2007 [1 favorite has favorites]

My birth name was Kirstin and I couldn't stand it that everybody mispronounced and misspelled my name. I changed the spelling of my name a long time ago to Kierstin.

Now I rarely get mis-pronounciation. However, it never fixed the spelling problems. I have struggled with this same issue for a long long time, and tried many things. Nothing seems to fix it. Mostly it seems that no one really cares that they've misspelled it, no matter how you wish to highlight the spelling graphically or otherwise. Drawing active attention to proper spelling also seems to irritate lots of people. You might watch for that.

I faced the same issue when I was trying to work out business name issues and decided to use a different corporate name.
posted by kch at 10:24 PM on September 13, 2007