All throughout my life it seems I have had to fight a battle to get people to denote my surname correctly. Often the obvious mistake is to make me a Mc and not a Mac. Thereafter the error is often to give me a second capital M, where there is none.

As a teacher I have had a variety of mis-spellings over the years and many of these baffle me with their randomness.

In addition to these, nowadays many folks now call me Rob. This is due to my twitter handle (@robfmac) and maybe also because I tend not to correct people when they do so. Perhaps this is due to the weariness I suffer from as a result of the battles over my surname, or maybe I secretly want people to drop the ‘ert’.

I fear that my wife and I may have set up our elder daughter for such battles as she has an easily mistaken first name and even has an ë at the end of her middle name too. It must be said that this resulted in the registrar having to get a user guide out to their PC when I was registering the birth.

Final thought: many people change their name by deed poll and often women change their name upon getting married – if you could change your name, what would you change it to?