A woman says she felt she had no choice but to call her in-laws out in front of their friends after they wouldn't stop calling her by the wrong name. The woman, whose full name is Rynne, says her in-laws have always been under the impression that her actual name is Katherine, with Rynn just being a nickname.
She's repeatedly corrected them and asked them not to introduce her to people as Katherine, but 'they always go back to it'. She and her husband were even forced to take a 'small break' from them for a while, having become so tired of this disrespectful misnaming.
They apologised for their behaviour, and for a while, it seemed as though they'd changed their ways. Unfortunately, Rynn was in for a nasty surprise while attending her mother-in-law's birthday party.
Taking to Reddit, where she goes by the username u/Illustrious_Bit_178, the fed-up daughter-in-law wrote: "A couple of her friends came up to me and asked if I was Katherine. They said my mother-in-law talked all about me.
"I decided to get a little bit jokey instead of annoyed and played upon it saying my mother-in-law is so forgetful and that I was so sorry she told them the wrong name. That I'll need to write my name on everything she owns so they don't forget. Her friends found it funny but told her it was weird that she gave them the wrong name."
Later on, Rynn's mother-in-law and father-in-law came over to chat, and she told them straight that 'they need to accept that [her] name isn't up to them'. In response, they blasted her as 'rude', and accused her of taking things 'too far'.
Reaching out to fellow Reddit users, Rynn reflected on how the situation had unfolded and wondered whether she should have gone about things differently.
One person commented: "How are they unaware that they're embarrassing both you and themselves in front of their friends? It's a basic of decent manners to get people's names right, to the best of one's abilities, whenever possible."
Another wittily advised: "You could always just add 'Kath' to the front of their names. 'Hi everyone, I'd like you to meet my mother-in-law, Kathmargaret, and my father-in-law, Kathrobert. And this is their dog, Kathfido'."
Do you have a name-related story to share? Email us at julia.banim@reachplc.com
