It leads to less confusion in the Starbucks line if you have a common name:
John Sherman, Being John
Among coffee drinkers with less common names, a Starbucks name is the one you tell the barista instead of your real name to avoid rude questions and misspellings. Last year I read an essay about this practice by a woman named Svati Kirsten Narula, whose Starbucks name is “Kristen.” I have also used a Starbucks name on occasion, but with the opposite intent, identifying myself as Eugene or Cornelius, for fear of losing my mocha to another John. At busy restaurants in New York, where “John, party of two” might describe more than one couple milling around on the sidewalk outside for half an hour, I’ll leave my last name, or the name of whoever I’m with.
Svati may have reason to avoid trying to explain her name to busy strangers up to their necks in under-caffeinated prima donnas—no less reason than Shefali, who wrote a similar piece for the Village Voice a few years ago. Far easier, they agree, to choose something plain and avoid confusion. “Ah, to be a Joe or a Ben,” another Starbucks namer writes in The Economist. “To live an easy monosyllabic life.”
Stowe is an uncommon name, to say the least. People mishear it because of that, so it’s easier to use other names, which I sometimes do. I was Pedro for a few years. However, nowadays I simply spell out ‘S-T-O’, and then say ‘Stowe’. And that works, pretty much.
from Stowe Boyd http://stoweboyd.com/post/136809265817
