It turns out that even having a common name doesn’t save you from having to spell it out.

Parents have become increasingly vivid with their name choices over the years, with young people today sporting all sorts of unique monikers that didn’t exist when their grandparents were children. Having a unique name can be a good thing as it will make you stand out in a crowd, but as anyone with an “out there” name will tell you – having to spell it out for everyone can be a real pain.

But apparently, it’s not just the unusually named among us who have trouble getting other people to pronounce or spell their moniker correctly. One man has gone viral for claiming that he constantly runs into people who don’t know how to say his name – even though it’s one of the most common names in many English-speaking countries.

In a video on TikTok, Stephen Rigatoni explained that every time he orders something online to pick it up in-store, he runs into the same problem – as people expect his name to be spelt Steven, so have issues giving him his order.

According to The Bump, Stephen is the 715th most popular name in the US, where the TikTok user is from, but the alternative spelling of Steven is significantly more popular at 482nd.

In the video, Stephen acted out a recreation of an interaction between himself and a retail worker when he went to pick up an order he had placed online. He stated his name to the employee, but when they looked at the packages in front of them they claimed they couldn’t see an order for “Steven”.

The employee then read out Stephen’s name and claimed they “had something here for Stefan”, as they had wrongly assumed the “ph” in the man’s name would make an “f” sound as it does in most other cases in English – even though Stephen is a hugely common name.

In the caption of his clip, the man claimed this mix-up happens to him “once a week”, as people can’t seem to pronounce his name properly.

Commenters on the video were equally as confused as they said there are many famous people called Stephen, including Stephen King, Stephen Hawking, Stephen Fry, and Stephen Colbert – all of whom pronounce their names with a “v” sound in the middle rather than an “f”.

However, there were a couple of people who agreed with the retail worker as they said they would also assume the name was supposed to be pronounced as “Stefan”.

One person said: “Sorry, I do read that as Stefan,” and another added: “This is making me realize that it makes no sense for Steven to be spelt Stephen. I’m with the service workers on this one.”