Accidental Misnaming / Live-Action TV

• 13 Reasons Why: Invoked by Jessica and Hannah, where getting each other's names wrong was playful banter that helped them bond.
• The 2014 Academy Awards had an infamous moment where, when John Travolta was introducing Idina Menzel for the performance of Best Original Song nominee "Let It Go" referred to her as "Adele Dazeem". Menzel made sure to exploit the joke. In Menzel's next play that year If/Then, the gaffe was introduced into the playbill, listing her as the star of Farfignugen and Nert. And it's become a running gag to claim it was "Adele Dazeem" singing when Idina doesn't hit every note in a song.
• Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.: In season 3, Skye starts going by her birth name, Daisy Johnson, after she finally discovers it (she was left at an orphanage as a baby, and her legal name, "Mary Sue Poots", is not to her tastes). Coulson, the one who initially recruited her to S.H.I.E.L.D., keeps slipping up and referring to her as Skye.
  Coulson: Hard to get used to, huh?
  Hunter: No.
  Mack: No, just you.
• In Arrested Development George Oscar Bluth II goes by his initials GOB, pronounced like the biblical Job. Everyone unfamiliar with him (including announcers at his magic shows and John Beard) calls him "Gob" with a hard "G". He is overjoyed in the series finale when someone finally gets it right.
• Barney Miller - Inspector Luger always called Sgt. Levitt 'Levine', right up to the final episode.
• Bastard Boys: Julian Burnside QC addresses Greg Combet as Geoff repeatedly. Greg doesn't bother correcting him.
• Bewitched:
  • While Darren's name is mostly gotten wrong on purpose by Endora, his own mother once accidentally calls him Darwin.
  • One woman in an episode keeps calling Samantha "Sonsara" by mistake, to the point of Samantha saying, "Why don't you just call me Sam? It might be easier to remember."
• Blackadder
  • In the first series, King Richard IV can never manage to remember his son Edmund's name. When he finally gets it right in the finale...
    Edmund: Father, you called me "Edmund"!
    Richard: WHAT? OH, SORRY, EDGAR...
  • Combined with Throw It In! in season 3, as Hugh Laurie actually screwed up his line.
    Edmund: You can start by not calling me "Bladder".
• A Running Gag in Brazilian soap Cheias de Charme. Laughably Evil villainess Chayene always misnamed one of the protagonists, Rosário, referring to her by many names which first syllable was "Ro-", except the correct one. Once she misnamed Rosário with two different names in the same sentence.
  Chayene: If it's war Rochelle wants, it's war Roxanne will get.
• Chespirito had several instances of this in pretty much every work. Some notable instances:
  • El Chavo del ocho always called Don Ramón "Ron Damón". The latter didn't seem to mind, though. Also, a Running Gag was that Don Ramón would sometimes mix up Mr. Barriga's name with another word (like saying "No todos tenemos su barriga, señor Suerte", which means "Not everyone has your belly, Mr. Luck").
  • An episode of El Chapulín Colorado had a character whose surname was "Perrín", an actual surname, but it sounds like a derivate of "Perro", which means "Dog". A Running Gag during the episode was that Chapulín would constantly get his name wrong, mixing it with random animals and calling him "Burrín" ^*From "Burro"="Donkey", "Lombricín" ^*Fron "Lombriz"="Earthworm", and the guy would correct it every time (even at the end when Chapulín got it right).
• On Chuck, Carina always addresses Morgan as "Martin".
• The Colbert Report. When interviewing Smaug from The Hobbit films, Colbert gets into an argument over whether its name is pronounced "Smoug" or "Smawg". Eventually the irritated dragon says to just call him "Dude".
• Death in Paradise: In "An Unhelpful Aid", Sergeant Young keeps calling Fidel "Freddie".
• Doctor Who:
  • Before the Doctor really got to like Ian Chesterton, he would call him things like "Chesterfield", "Chatterton", "Chesserton", and so on. The story is that this began as Throw It In! of William Hartnell's line-hashings but was soon written into the character. After the Doctor gets to like him, he gets the name right, unless he's intentionally trying to upset him — except for a small and heartbreaking Character Check where he accidentally mangles it in by Thinking Out Loud at the end of "The Massacre" about how lonely he is, as if he's already forgetting what Ian's name really was.
    • Referenced in the docudrama An Adventure in Space and Time, where Hartnell is depicted as distractedly calling his new producer by his original producer's name.
  • In "The Web Planet", Insectoid Aliens the Menoptera struggle with human names, implicitly due to their very non-human intelligence and insect-like anatomy. Vrestin, the lead Menoptera in the story, mangles Ian's name into something like 'Hair-on'.
  • At the end of "The Myth Makers", the Doctor refers to Katarina as "Katrina".
  • In "The Gunfighters", the Doctor constantly calls Wyatt Earp "Mr. Werp" because no-one bothers to correct him.
  • Ace consistently calls the Doctor "Professor" and he consistently calls her Ace, not Dorothy.
  • The Ninth Doctor keeps calling Mickey "Ricky" despite the constant corrections. Then it turns out that Mickey's Alternate Universe counterpart is really named Ricky.
  • In "World War Three", the Doctor hears the aliens refer to themselves as the Slitheen and starts calling them this. It's all fine until he calls them "the Slitheen race", resulting in a bit of confusion. They correct him that "Slitheen" is their family name. He's left to figure out their actual species on his own. They're Raxacoricofallapatorians. This doesn't stop the Doctor or Rose from calling all Raxacoricofallapatorians they meet "Slitheen" (it's easier to pronounce), which causes members of other families to correct them in annoyance.
  • "Deep Breath": The Twelfth Doctor, suffering from amnesia and delirium after his regeneration, constantly mixes up or forgets the names of the people he knows. He calls Strax "Grumpy" (after the dwarf), Clara "Handles", "the not-me one" and "the asking-questions one", and Vastra and Jenny "the green one" and "the not-green one" respectively. He also calls Strax "Clara" at one point, and when Clara angrily corrects him, he gets confused and asks them to start wearing nametags.
  • In a more deliberate example, Twelve keeps calling Danny "P.E.", despite both Danny and Clara constantly correcting him that he's a maths teacher. This is more of the Doctor's prejudice against the military, since Danny is a retired soldier. In the Doctor's mind, the only thing a soldier is good for is physical stuff. Danny eventually just rolls with it.
  • In "Arachnids in the UK", Jack Robertson keeps referring to Najia as "Nadia". This is not deliberate, he's just a Jerkass who can't be bothered learning the names of his staff.
• Turns into a Running Gag in Drake & Josh, in which Drake often calls Eric "Craig", much to the latter's annoyance, and Eric constantly has to correct him.
• In The Expanse season four, Amos apparently can't remember Murtry's last name, calling him "Murry", "Marty", and "Murphy". Subverted when he calls Murtry by his correct name while they're exchanging veiled threats, implying he just doesn't respect Murtry enough to use it most of the time.
• Farscape: Several characters are detained by aliens called Plokavians in the "Rashomon"-Style episode "The Ugly Truth." Crichton, the human Trapped in Another World, persistently misnames them "Plakavoids" - as do all the other characters during his retelling of events.
• Frasier:
  • Niles Crane is often called "Miles" by those who don't know him well.
  • In one episode, Frasier complains that one of Roz's ex-boyfriends kept calling him "Frazer". He's more upset about this than the fact that the guy ghosted Roz.
    Frasier: How can someone not hear the difference between "Frasier" and "Frazer"?
    Roz: Yeah, that's what bugged me the most too.
• Friday Night Lights: Coach Taylor continually refers to Landry as "Lance". When people mention Landry to him, he blankly asks "Who?" until they say "Lance".
• Friends: Phoebe accidentally calls her boyfriend David by the name of her ex-boyfriend Mike. She tries to cover by claiming Monica calls Chandler 'Richard' (her ex-boyfriend) all the time and it's totally normal. Of course Chandler gets worried and Monica is annoyed given she's never done anything of the sort.
  • Rachel's sister Amy misnames Emma for "Emily" and Phoebe for "Emma":
    Monica: Hey, Amy. Is this the first time you're seeing Emma?
    Amy: I think so. (to Phoebe) It's nice to meet you, Emma!
    Phoebe: "Phoebe".
    Amy: Oh, that's a funny noise.
    (...)
    Amy: But I was thinking about changing her (Emma's) name. I'm just not really a big fan of "Emily".
    Ross: "Emma".
    Amy: (to Phoebe) Emma? Ross wants you.
    Phoebe: "PHOEBE!"
    Amy: (to Ross and Rachel) Why does she keep making that noise?
  • Rachel eventually loses her patience with Amy and while yelling at her accidentally uses "Emily" as well.
    Rachel: You want to know why I'm not giving Emily to you?!
    Ross: Emma.
    Rachel: Oh, whose side are you on?!
  • Bob, a co-worker of Chandler, constantly misnames him for "Toby". Chandler never corrects him, because he's afraid of how awkward it would be. Later on, Chandler's boss asks his opinion on adding Bob to his team, to which Chandler is negative, mostly to avoid forcing the name issue. But, when Bob finds out some "Chandler Bing" blocked his promotion, he ventilates it to "Toby", putting him in an even more difficult situation. Hilarity Ensues at the end, when Bob destroys Chandler's office... and Chandler joins him when asked to help with it.
  • After Monica and Chandler get engaged Ross tells Chandler that his and Monica's father asked him to invite "Chauncey" to the country club so they could get to know each other.
    Ross: I assumed he meant you.
    Chandler: Well, did you correct him?
    Ross: No, I thought it'd be more fun this way.
  • In another episode, Rachel complains that her boss called her "Raquel", and to avoid correcting her, everyone else went along with it. By the end of the day, she'd been nicknamed Rocky.
• On Fringe Walter is incapable of calling Astrid by her correct name, except once when he was on drugs. When Over There Astrid visits the regular universe, however, he does get her name right, much to Over Here Astrid's confusion.
• Game of Thrones:
  • Hot Pie seems seems to think Arya is a Stark of "Winterhell".
  • Tormund calls Sandor "the Dog" rather than the Hound... possibly intentionally.
• In The Good Life, 'Sir' seems convinced that Tom's name is 'Tim', and everyone is either too polite or too obsequious to correct him. The few attempts that are made to made to correct him just result in confusion, as 'Sir' asks who 'Tom' is.
• In the Green Acres episode "The Candidate", Oliver attempts to air his grievances against state district representative Ben Hanks regarding the quality of the road (Hooterville only has the one). Hanks repeatedly gets his name wrong — calling him something different every time — and when Oliver pledges to run against him in the next election, his name is similarly misprinted in all the headlines.
• A Running Gag in first season of Harrow is that Harrow seems incapable of remembering the name of Simon's partner, resulting in all kinds of creative guesses.
• The Running Gag in the Haven episode "Ain't No Sunshine" is that Audrey is a workaholic who cannot remember the names of her fellow officers. She tries to prove Nathan wrong on this account, but cannot get anyone's name right. Luckily for her, most of them just kind of go with it.
  Audrey (to photographer): Hey, can you make sure to get a picture of the back of the couch? Thanks, Tony.
  Photographer: (leaves, annoyed)
  Audrey (to Nathan): Steve?
  Nathan: Eddie.
  Audrey: Eddie? Damn. That wasn't even an option.
• Happy Days: In "The Physical", Sgt. Beckler accidentally calls Fonzie "Forchanelli" (his real last name is Fonzarelli). Fonzie is so offended by this that he deliberately calls Beckler "Belcher".
• In I Love Lucy, Mario, a gondolier from Venice, takes them up on their offer to visit "when he's in America." Mario is looking for his brother who was visiting the brother's friend. When Lucy asks the friend's name, Mario says, "Sam Franceska." Lucy thinks that he meant "San Francisco." After the Hilarity Ensues, Lucy and Ricky send Mario off to "San Francisco." Just as they return from the bus station, Mario's brother arrives at the apartment, saying he was visiting a sick friend "Sam Franceska."
• The InBESTigators: In "The Case of the Distressed Dancer", the egocentric dancer Zac pays so little attention to the dance studio's technician that he thinks her name is 'Trixie'. It's actually Trish.
• Kaizoku Sentai Gokaiger:
  • Somewhere between versions A and D, but Navi does not like it when Marvelous calls him "Bird." When Navi disappears in episode 8, Luka claims this might be the reason he ran away.
  • Also, in #7, Warz Gill can never get Pacha Kamaq's name right; at one point he calls him "Pajama Jack". Pacha Kamaq doesn't actually mind, though.
• In Kamen Rider Decade, for some reason, Tsukasa keeps calling Kohana "Maruko". In Onigashima Warship, set after the Den-O arc, he calls her "Hanamaruko-chan". Most likely a Throw It In! moment as Kohana's hairstyle resembled Chibi Maruko-chan.
• In one scene of Kim's Convenience, Naya and Reshma (two Muslim women of the same age and height with veiled faces) come into the titular convenience store, and owner Mr. Kim greets them each by name. Another customer named Roger is curious about how he can tell them apart, and Mr. Kim mentions a few subtle differences between them that he has come to notice. After Mr. Kim goes into the back to get something, the two women good-naturedly tell Roger that he gets their names wrong about 50 percent of the time.
• David Letterman turned this into a Running Gag, constantly calling members of his staff by the wrong name. For instance, director Hal Gurnee was often called "Hal Gertner", and band drummer Anton Fig was routinely introduced as "Anton Zipp".
• Leverage: The mark in "The Bank Shot Job" is an arrogant corrupt judge who rules the town. He keeps calling the bank manager 'Fred' when his name is actually Frank, and has seemingly been doing so for years. This comes back to bite him at the end of the episode.
• Liv and Maddie: On Parker's first day at BOOMS, he accidentally spells his name as "Pucker".
• On Lost Girl, in the episode "Mirror, Mirror", Bo is perpetually (and drunkenly) incapable of calling Baba Yaga by her correct name (calling her instead various things like "Baby Yoda").
• Lois & Clark: Mr. Mxyzptlk, played by Howie Mandel. Lois mispronounces it as "Mazel Tov". He doesn't care for that one bit.
• Love O2O: A Funny Background Event in the second episode shows a character mistakenly calling Meng Yi Ran "Meng Hao Ran" (the name of a Chinese poet).
• In Married... with Children, Al Bundy's last name is often mispronounced. He's called Mr. Bindy (Just Shoe It), Al Budny (The Legend of Ironhead Haynes), Al Boondy (Driving Mr. Boondy), Al Birdie (A Man for No Seasons).
• On an episode of M*A*S*H, a visiting surgeon keeps getting BJ's name wrong. The only time he gets it right is when he's drunk.
• Midsomer Murders: In "Last Man Out", Barnaby, flustered after seeing his ex-Sergeant, calls Winter 'Jones' by mistake.
• In Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers Season 3, Rito Revolto had a terrible habit of calling Lord Zedd "Ed". This got to the point where, when Zedd arrived in the Command Center and Alpha called him "Ed" out of fear, Zedd erupted in anger over it.
• On Monday Night Football during the late 70s and early 80s, Frank Gifford would often mispronounce then-Atlanta Falcons head coach Leeman Bennett's name as "Leeman Beeman"; the MNF crew would often hold bets on which quarter Gifford would make the flub.
• The Monkees:
  • Every minor character seems incapable of pronouncing Mike Nesmith's last name. Among the variants: Nishwash, Nashmirth, Nipmop... Subverted in "Monkees in Texas," when the villains refer to Mike and his aunt as "Nesters"... he starts to correct them before his aunt explains that the word means "farmer" and that they were correct in their word choice.
  • In the Season 2 opening sequence, Peter gets increasingly upset when each of the others is mis-identified as him, then smiles once the credits get his name right.
  • In "Monkee vs. Machine," when Peter gets flustered in a job interview, the computer identifies him as "Notwhat" and "Nitwit."
• In The Morecambe and Wise Show the duo would often get the name of the special guest wrong. The most famous example is Mr Andrew Preview (Andre Previn). And during The Beatles' appearance on the show, Eric kept referring to Ringo as "Bongo" (and whenever Ernie corrected him with "Ringo!", Eric replied, "'im too!").
• Mork & Mindy: When the eponymous alien and human's son Mearth first starts to talk, not only does he get their genders wrong, but he calls Mindy "Shoe".
• In Mr. Belvedere, Heather's friend Angela constantly gets Mr. Belvedere's surname wrong, calling him "Mr. Bellybutton", "Mr. Bellpepper", et cetera. Angela never says the same (wrong) surname twice.
• Ms. Marvel:
  • In the first episode, a teacher at Kamala's school greets her as "Camelia", and Kamala is too shy to correct him. At the start of the second episode, once Kamala discovers that she has super-powers and gains some self-confidence, when he calls her "Camelia" she answers, "Morning, actually I've been meaning to tell you for years, it's pronounced 'Ka-ma-la'." The teacher seems to take it in stride and accept the correction.
  • Kamran consistently calls Bruno "Brian" to the point where Bruno (and the viewer) is convinced it must be Malicious Misnaming. But when Kamran asks for a Relationship Reboot, and Bruno introduces himself as Bruno, Kamran is horrified to realise he's been getting it wrong all this time.
• Murdoch Mysteries: In "The Murdoch Identity", Detective Slorach has real trouble remembering George Crabtree's name, and keeps calling him all kinds of wrong names.
• Mystery Science Theater 3000
  • The show had a Running Gag of the riffers giving nicknames to characters based on mishearing their names, like "Cornjob" (Kon-Chan) from Gamera vs. Guiron, "Big Stupid" (Bix Dugan) from The Girl in Lover's Lane, and "Rapid Bathroom" (Radford Baines) from The Killer Shrews.
  • Frank would routinely call Dr. Forrester "Steve" despite the latter's first name being Clayton. Although it's unclear if this was Frank's attempt at being passive-aggressive towards his Bad Boss, or just another example of him being The Ditz.
  • In the episode featuring The Touch of Satan, a babysitter is charged with watching over Mike, the Bots, Brain Guy and Bobo. As she's naming off everyone, she calls Crow "Cow". This leads to him to passive aggressively say "And I'm Cow."
• The Nanny: In "The Strike", a photographer refers to C.C. Babcock as "Miss Boobcock", which gets reprinted in several places and even on a billboard.
• Odd Squad:
  • In "By the Book", Olive, of all people, refers to Gooey Randall as "Filthy Paul". According to him, he gets misnamed "Filthy Paul" quite often.
  • A brief Running Gag in "Oscar of All Trades" is Oprah getting Oscar's name incorrect, calling him "Oofer" and "Omar". ^note The latter name is Hilarious in Hindsight since there would be a main character named Omar two seasons later, who works under Oprah. At one point, she even refers to him as "Oquin" directly after he tells her his actual name. Eventually she gets the idea to yell his actual name to make it easier to remember — something that comes full circle in "Zero Effect", where she did just that in order to call him to the bullpen.
  • Two misnamings in "O is Not For Over". Ohlm mispronounces Polly Graph as "Pooly Groove" at one point when suggesting to Otto where to find the rampant spider-cat. Later on in the episode, Olive does this to herself and manages to mess up her personal voicemail greeting by calling herself "Ms. O" instead of "Agent Olive", because she's not used to being referred to as "Ms. O" following her promotion to the Management department.
  • In "The Creature Whisperer", Owen calls Ocean "Mr. Pond" and states that he's not good at naming bodies of water.
  • This is a continuous Running Gag in "Dr. O No", with Olly repeatedly getting Oona's name wrong and calling her such names as "Ooba" and "Oola".
  • In the Cold Open of "Other Olympia", Otis mispronounces a client's name as "Melissa" when it's really "Sharon". When he's corrected, he nonchalantly remarks that he "took a shot at it."
  • Throughout "End of the Road", The Shadow's real name is often spoken as "Elizabeth", despite it being "Olizabeth".
• Trigger from Only Fools and Horses always calls Rodney "Dave". The show had endless fun with what one might think would be a repetitive gag by coming up with variations such as:
  Trigger: [Del might name his son] Rodney, after Dave over there.
• Jerry from Parks and Recreation is actually named Gary; the director got his name wrong on the first day and he wasn't assertive enough to correct him.
• Poirot: In "The Adventure of Johnnie Waverly", Mr. Waverly introduces Hercule Poirot to his wife (Mrs. Waverly) by calling him "Hercules Poirot". Poirot tells him that he should be called "Hercule Poirot", not "Hercules".
• In QI, in the Series 7 episode "Gothic":
  Stephen: Alan, you're a zombie, you bite Jimmy (points to Jimmy Carr), Jimmy, you bite Jack (points to Jack Dee), Jack, you bite Mel. (points to Sue Perkins)
  Alan: [points to Sue] Sue.^note Mel Giedroyc was Sue Perkins' former comedy partner.
  (Stephen facepalms himself)
  Sue: It's that warm personal touch you get when you're on this show.
  Stephen: I am so ashamed!
  Alan: No one noticed, Hugh.
• Radio Enfer: During an episode where Jean-Lou becomes incredibly smart, he accidentally refers to his friends Carl and Léo as Charles and Géo respectively.
• Throughout the entire run of Raising Hope, Virginia pronounces Sabrina's name as "Sabriner".
• The Really Loud House: In "The Princess and the Everlasting Emerald: A Royal Woods Fairy Tale", Flip confuses Leni and Lisa for each other, Lana for her twin Lola, and Lucy for Luan, and calls Rita "Conchita".
• An episode of Rookie Blue tries to make this a running gag in an episode by having Police Superintendent Peck calling Officer Chris Diaz "Craig". Lauren Holly as Peck wrecks the joke by calling Chris "Chris" the second time she calls him by name.
• Scrubs: Amidst all of Dr. Cox's Malicious Misnaming of JD, Dr. Kelso genuinely thinks that Turk's last name is "Turkleton". Apparently the confusion results from Turk going primarily by his last name, since Kelso also thinks that "Turk" is Turk's first name, meaning that he thinks his full name is "Turk Turkleton".^note For those wondering, Turk's actual first name is Christopher.
  • JD mentioned in an episode that he and Turk are so inseparable that an Indian girl once slept with Turk because she thought he was also Indian and his name was Turk Anjaydee (Turk and JD). Later, a bartender makes that same assumption.
• This happens to many of the Seinfeld characters, most often Jerry, who gets his last name butchered to "Steinfeld" or "Seinfield". On one occasion he was called "Gary Seinfield" by someone who had just been told his name literally one second ago.
  • One episode's plot is driven by one of Elaine's coworkers mistaking her name for "Suzie". Things spiral out from there, until Elaine's attending a funeral for an alter-ego that never existed.
• Sense8: Bug first met Nomi before she transitioned. When he meets up with her again he accidentally calls her "Mike" a few times out of habit. Nomi's girlfriend Amanita gets a little defensive but it's clear he's not being malicious and apologizes each time. By the second season he's consistently referring to her as "Nomi" without a single mistake.
• Sesame Street: For the first 16 seasons of the show, Big Bird almost never got Mr. Hooper's name right, always calling him by some other -ooper sounding name (usually Mr. Looper), prompting him to correct the bird in annoyance. Despite this, he's never angry with him and loves him just the same. This got waned down in the newer seasons of the show after Hooper's death.
• Sherlock can't seem to remember Lestrade's first name. (It's Greg.) Then again, he is known to purposefully not learn or forget information he considers irrelevant.
  Greg Lestrade: Hello, John.
  John Watson: Greg.
  (later)
  Sherlock Holmes: Is that why you're calling yourself "Greg"?
  John Watson: (incredulous) That's his name!
  Sherlock Holmes: Is it?
  Greg Lestrade: Yes... if you ever bothered to find out.
  • This may also be a nod at the original novels, where Lestrade's first name is never revealed (the initial is stated to be "G", though). This is why Elementary names him Gareth instead.
• In Star Trek:
  • Star Trek: The Next Generation:
    • Lwaxana Troi regularly mispronounces Worf's name as "Woof" or "Wolf".
    • In "Hollow Pursuits", Picard directs his officers to try to help Barclay overcome his social anxieties, and in particular to quit using the nickname "Broccoli". To his dismay, Picard himself accidentally uses the nickname right to Barclay's face.
    • In "The Child", Pulaski mispronounces Data's name as "dah-tuh" by mistake.
    • In one episode, Deanna Troi remembers a man coming onto her, but getting her name wrong, calling her Diane.
    • In "Thine Own Self", Data has amnesia and is carrying a briefcase marked "Radioactive". He and the aliens wonder if his name is "Mr. Radioactive".
  • Star Trek: Deep Space Nine:
    • In "The House of Quark", a Klingon calls Quark "Quirk".
    • In "Second Skin", a man calls Kira "Kiri". Also, in "Our Man Bashir", a holographic woman gets Kira's names around the wrong way and calls her "Nerys Kira".
    • In "Prodigal Daughter", Yanas Tigan calls her daughter Ezri Tigan. This is despite the fact that, as s joined trill, Ezri uses the symbiont's name as her last name. Possibly Malicious Misnaming, given Yanas's attitude and the fact that Ezri had already told her that she is Ezri Dax.
  • Star Trek: Voyager: Tuvok says, "I am Vulcan," meaning "I am from Planet Vulcan" or "I am of the Vulcan race," but Neelix thinks his name is Mr. Vulcan. This one evolves into more of a friendly nickname than a mistake; Neelix is soon perfectly aware of what Tuvok's real name is, but he keeps calling Tuvok "Mr. Vulcan" on several occasions anyway, even though Tuvok isn't the only Vulcan aboard (although Vorik is barely shown).
  • In an episode of Star Trek: Enterprise, Charles "Trip" Tucker says, "Dammit!". A nearby alien assumes that that's his name.
  • Star Trek: Picard: In "Absolute Candor", Mister Hospitality (the Emergency Hospitality Hologram on La Sirena) pronounces Zhaban as "Chee-ban."
• On Succession, this happens to Greg Hirsch twice in the first two episodes, belying his Beneath Notice nature; first, he's introduced to the family as Cousin Craig, and then he's listed on the Waystar employment records as Greg Roy, because nobody remembers his last name.
• Supergirl: A Running Gag is Cat Grant's inability to get Kara Danvers' name right. Even in life or death situations, she'll always call her "Kyra" or some derivative. In a heartwarming moment, she finally gets her name right in the season 1 finale.
• In "To Serve and Pawtect" from Turner & Hooch (2021), Senator Helen Pine incorrectly refers to Hooch as "Pooch" after he starts howling during a rally and becomes an unexpected hit. The name sticks for subsequent appearances because the campaign feels that "Hooch" evokes alcohol and big liquor sponsors, which are opposed to the senator. She finally gets his name right, though, after he saves her life.
• Utopia: A Running Gag in "Smart Cities" involves the conference organizers getting Tony's name wrong and referring to him as 'Tony Woodley' rather than 'Tony Woodford'. The final scene has him being announced as 'Tony Woodley' as he takes the stage to give the keynote address.
• On The West Wing, the Genius Ditz Lord John Marbury almost always refers to Leo, the White House Chief of Staff, as "Gerald". He does get Leo's name right at least once, so it may be Obfuscating Stupidity on Marbury's part, but it's hard to say.

  • It is. After CJ becomes Chief of Staff, his response is that she must be the new Gerald.

  • Played with in the episode Privateers, when CJ refers to Marion Cotesworth-Haye of Marblehead as "Helena Hodworth Hooter-Tooter of Braintree"

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