Each time Samantha Hart starts a new job, she braces herself for an uncomfortable conversation with human resources.
“My name is Samantha Hart,” the 27-year-old began a recent TikTok video. “Most companies use the email designation of first initial, last name, meaning my email would be shart.”
(If you’re wondering why that email address might be an issue, allow this clip from “Along Came Polly” to explain.)
Hart, who lives in Virginia and works in communications, went on to share that her last two employers reached out a week before her start date once they noticed.
“My name does not exactly fit the company email structure as they would intend, and would I mind if they gave me a different structure for my email,” Hart said.
Would she mind? Just the opposite!
“I don’t want an email that says shart — fix it, give me something else,” Hart said, with a laugh.
Plenty of people commiserated with Hart in the comments and shared their own stories of unfortunate email monikers.
“clittmann has entered the chat. Have been dealing with this since college,” one person wrote in the comments.
Added another, “We had an S lutz at one company.”
Other notable replies included:
- “My name is Sue Hartlove so my work emails are always shartlove.”
- My cousin is a shart and my brother is phart — a source of great joy for their coworkers
- “dbhag was my email at school.”
- “I worked with a Patrick Ecker at a previous job…”
- “ours was first 5 of last + first initial. one guy was gonna be McAnus so they gave him a special one."
- “Mine is literally Hater so I understand.”
“I’m living for the comments,” Hart tells TODAY.com. “It’s nice to know I’m not alone in this."
Hart recalls how her parents got her a vanity license plate for her first car. At the time, they didn’t know the meaning of shart — and neither did Hart.
“I rolled up to school and everybody made fun of me,” she says. “My car became known as the ‘Shartmobile.’ And that was the first time I understood my name was going to be a problem.”
It won’t be a problem for much longer. Hart is getting married soon and she will be taking her husband’s last name.
"I'll never have to have another awkward conversation with HR!" she exclaims.
In 2020, Amy Schumer announced that she and her husband, Chris Fischer, were changing their then 11-month-old son's name to Gene David Fischer. The little boy was previously known as Gene Attell.
“We realized that we by accident named our son ‘genital,’” Schumer said on her podcast “3 Girls, 1 Keith.”
Hart hopes her story will serve as a warning for moms and dads when they're choosing baby names.
"Think about what their email address might be," she says. "And monograms, too!"