A woman who once loved her name is no longer a fan after Amazon ‘ruined it’ for her.
While families that name their children after the likes of major cities such as London would expect comparisons to the famous locations, the parents of this woman could have never expected their child being poked fun at.
‘Alexa, what’s the weather?’, Alexa, what’s the time?’ – we are all familiar with the piece of tech that has become a bit of a meme over the years.
But for Alexa Nizam, it has well and truly ‘ruined’ her name.
Writing in a first-person piece for Business Insider, Alexa penned: “Growing up, I loved having the name Alexa. Aside from a brief first-grade obsession with the name Rebecca, I’ve always been happy with it and never had a reason to feel otherwise.”
But when Amazon’s Alexa took the world by storm in 2015, Alexa’s world was well and truly turned upside down.
At first, the references were ‘subtle’, according to Alexa – with the vast majority of people asking if Alexa enjoyed sharing the name with Amazon’s new device.
“I’d say that while they [Amazon] should have gone with something more obscure, it hadn’t really affected me,” she added.
“I was so naive.”
She wrote on Business Insider: “I worked at a department store in 2018, and at least once a day, a customer would make fun of my name. ‘What’s the weather today, Alexa?’ ‘What time is it, Alexa?’ Some would even say things like, ‘I bet you get those jokes all the time,’ as if they weren’t part of the onslaught themselves.”
And it got to the point where Alexa ‘dreaded’ meeting new people in the fear of them making a comment about her name.
Come the pandemic, you’d think Alexa would have had a bit of respite.
But that couldn’t have been further from the truth.
“During Zoom calls with coworkers, if anyone said my name, someone’s device would go off in the background,” Alexa explained.
Nowadays, Alexa is starting to warm towards her name once more.
“Despite the ups and downs, I’m still proud to be named Alexa,” she concluded.
The one thing Alexa does ask though is if you don’t request the current weather from her.