Accidental Misnaming in Literature
- In Alfie, Annie Rose calls Bernard "Dernard".
- In Amber Brown Is On the Move, Amber's dance teacher (and later her Dad's girlfriend), Miss Isobel, is bad at remembering names and keeps calling her a different gem every time she sees her - "opal," "topaz," etc. Eventually, she remembers her names, but still calls her other gem names as a friendly joke. It's also never made entirely clear whether she actually knew Amber's name from the start and was joking the entire time.
- In Blood Rites, Trisha is a self-involved, superficial ditz who doesn't care enough to learn Harry's name and keeps getting it wrong. Although it ends up working out in Harry's favor when she gives the police the wrong name when she falsely accuses him of attacking her.note
- In Bud, Not Buddy, Bud always introduces himself as "Bud, not Buddy" because of the Running Gag of people calling him Buddy for some inexplicable reason.
- A point throughout Career of Evil is that people often mistake the detective Cormoran Strike's name as "Cameron." This may have been inspired by the fact that this mistake sometimes shows up in reviews for the series online. Hilariously, Kirkus Reviews's review
of the title gives the protagonist's name as "Cameron Strike." - In Stephen King's Carrie, the high school principal is an out-of-touch nebbish. He first calls Carrie "Carrie Wright" instead of White, and then misremembers her first name as Cassie. Carrie, already severely stressed after the shower incident, does NOT take it well.
- In A Confederacy of Dunces, Miss Trixie, the senile octogenarian accountant at Levy Pants, always refers to Ignatius J. Reilly as "Gloria," confusing him with the stenographer who had been fired the day that Ignatius was hired (largely because Ignatius had been hired).
- In Coraline, Mr. Bobo calls the protagonist "Caroline".
- In Orconomics, Gorm saves a Goblin from an adventurer and asks his name. The Goblin replied "Gleebek", which is what Gorm starts calling him. They don't understand one another, as Gorm doesn't speak Shadowtongue, and the Goblin doesn't speak Imperial. Eventually, they end up in an Orc town, where a bilingual Orc reveals that "gleebek" is Shadowtongue for "hello". A bit of Fridge Brilliance: "Gleebek" keeps saying his name every time some calls him by it. Why? Because he thinks people are saying "hello" to him, so he says "hello" back. Everyone else just assumes he's being cute, repeating his name back at them. The Goblin's actual name is Tib'rin. Gorm feels a little stupid for calling him "Gleebek" all this time.
- Diary of a Wimpy Kid:
- Greg's crush Holly once accidentally offends him by calling him "Fregley", which is the name of the class Cloudcuckoolander.
- When Greg and Rowley temporarily stop being friends in "The Ugly Truth", Greg imagines forgetting Rowley's name as an adult and calling him "Rupert" and "Roger".
- When Greg's mother Susan gets him a signed book, the author mishears his name as "Craig".
- Sir George, the hero of Dragon-in-Distress, gets Princess Florinara Tansimasa Qasilava Delagordune's name wrong. No surprise. However, he actually gets it right later.
- In Eight Cousins, Rose has a friend named Annabelle Bliss. At one point, Uncle Alec refers to her as "that affected midget, Ariadne Blish." (We know it's this trope and not Malicious Misnaming because he's talking to himself, and no one else is around to hear it.)
- In Emily's Runaway Imagination, Fong Quock calls Prince the dog "Plince" due to having the stereotypical Asian speech impediment. This leads to "Plince" becoming Prince's nickname.
- The early books in the Fearless series had a side character named Zolov, an old Russian chess player who repeatedly referred to Gaia as "Cindy", due to his Alzheimer's disease.
- In Fudge, baby Tootsie can't say Peter's name, and calls him "Pee".
- Goblins in the Castle: The Baron can never remember William's name. William finds it very annoying that he can't be bothered to do so, but keeps quiet whenever it happens. He seems to have gotten better by the time of Goblins on the Prowl though.
- In Harry Potter, Professor Binns is always so caught up in his lecture that he barely notices his students are even there listening to it. On the very rare occasion that they stay awake in class long enough to ask him a question he always gets their names wrong (such as "Miss Grant" for Hermione Granger, or "Perkins" for Harry Potter).
- In Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, Malfoy calls Percy "Peter" and Ron (disguised as Malfoy's crony Crabbe) nearly blows his cover correcting him.
- In Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Percy hero-worships his boss, Mr. Crouch, who always calls him "Weatherby" instead of "Weasley." It's a bit strange because he at least casually knows Percy's father, Arthur; it's possibly he either doesn't know Arthur's surname either, or just doesn't realize that the two are related. In the same book, Rita Skeeter writes an article in The Daily Prophet about Arthur and calls him Arnold. Viktor Krum also keeps getting Hermione's name wrong, calling her "Hermy-own" and "Herm-own-ninny".
- In Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, Horace Slughorn considers Ron Weasley unimportant and therefore accidentally calls him Rupert, Ralph, Weatherby, Wallenby, or Wenby on various occasions. In a Pensieve scene in the same novel, the director at the orphanage where Tom Riddle grew up calls Dumbledore "Mr. Dumberton — sorry, Dunderbore." (Though she had the excuse of having just downed several glasses of gin.)
- In Hide Me Among the Graves, Johanna Crawford falls under the influence of an immortal inhuman vampiric being whose previous victims included her grandmother Josephine. It sometimes seems to have trouble remembering that they're two different people, and sometimes calls her by her grandmother's name.
- It's Not the End of the World: Karen's grandfather is called Garfa by the entire family. Similar to Beezus in the Ramona series, he got that nickname when Karen's older brother Jeff was unable to pronounce "Grandpa" as a toddler.
- Journey to Chaos
- Captain Ginger Hasina can't get anyone's name right. She's too focused on her latest Mad Scientist medicine to bother. She's called Eric "Derek", Redstreak "Breadbeck" and Jemas, her own Number Two, as "James".
- Nunnal Enaz has a localized case of this trope; she can't remember the names of her employees. Instead she calls them "Letter Guy" as in "A Guy", "B Guy," "C Guy" etc. Annala asked Wiol, a goddess who is aware of every possible future, if this would ever change. The answer? "No."
- In the first Julius Zebra book, Cornelius and Milus called Julius "Julia." Pliny and Lucia also called Julius "Julianne."
- Keeper of the Lost Cities: Sophie introduces Dex to Fitz in the first book and he soon forgets it, calling him "Deck" as he leaves. The annotated version confirms that this was unintentional on Fitz' part.
- In Matilda, Mr Wormwood cannot remember Miss Honey's name and calls her Miss Hawks and Miss Harris.
- In the Marley books, the baby calls Marley "Waddy".
- In Martins Mice, Drusilla says she's pregnant, but Martin, not knowing how biology works, thinks that this means Pregnant is her name.
- The fourth Molly Moon book features Princess Fang, who keeps addressing Molly as 'Milly'. However, this may be intentional as she ignores every time Molly attempts to correct her. Also, Fang proves she is capable of getting Molly's name right when she orders Rocky to kill her, so she is probably getting Molly's name wrong on purpose.
- In Stephen Manes' The Obnoxious Jerks when vice-principal "Creepy" Crawley uses the PA to call the Obnoxious Jerks to report to administration, he gets half of their names wrong. Wilver Sims becomes "Wilbert" and Frank Wess "West", while Harry Schwartzkopf and Roberto Garcia become "Barry" and "Robert". Wilver cheerfully comments that at least it's improving - last year he was referred to as "Delbert".
- In Percy Jackson and the Olympians Mr. D (Dionysus), Director of Camp Half-Blood, can't be bothered to get basically any of the campers' names correctly. It seems to be that he knows their names perfectly well, but intentionally gets them wrong, as he does (to the surprise of the campers) get them right on occasion.
- In the final Perfectly Princess book "Yellow Princess Gets a Pet", a Running Gag involves Spencer referring to Abby's kitten Lily as "Snowball". When Abby gives up Lily to Spencer after it's discovered that Abby's mom is allergic to cats, Spencer combines the names and dubs the kitten "Lily Snowball".
- Ramona Quimby:
- Beatrice got her nickname "Beezus" from Ramona misnaming her as a baby.
- Baby Roberta doesn't know how to say Ramona's name and calls her "Mo-mo".
- One senile relative of Ramona's calls her Juanita.
- In Ratburger, people call Miss Midge the teacher "Miss Midget" because he's so short. Usually, this is on purpose, but Zoe once calls her that by accident as a Freudian Slip.
- One of the stories in Real Quick Flash Fic has the narrator keep getting 'triceratops' wrong.
- In Redshirts, Captain Abernathy seems to be unable to remember protagonist Andrew Dahl's name, usually addressing him as "Dill." The captain also refers to an injured Ensign Jacobs as "Jackson," so he may simply be having trouble keeping up with his crew's High Turnover Rate.
- Savvy:
- The reason Mississippi goes by "Mibs" is because her toddler sister Gypsy called her that when she was just learning to speak.
- When Lester introduces the main characters, he calls Mibs "Midge", Fish "Trout", and Will Jr. "Bill Jr."
- In the sequel book, Scumble, Grandpa Bomba calls Sarah Jane "Betty Lou" and "Mary Anne".
- Waddington's inability to get other people's names right (he keeps calling Finch 'Winch' and 'Pinch') becomes an important plot point in The Small Bachelor by P. G. Wodehouse.
- In the Sniff books, little Sal calls Sniff "Miff".
- In Star Trek: Department of Temporal Investigations, Professor Vard refers to Dulmur as Agent Duller, Agent Dummer, and Agent Dombler, among others.
- Tailchaser's Song:
- In one scene, Stretchslow calls Hushpad "Squashpod" and then "Peachpit". He isn't interested in her or the fact she's gone missing.
- Earpoint is an old cat who can't remember Tailchaser's (admittedly unusual) name. He calls him "Tailchewer" then gives up on remembering his name.
- In Tikki Tikki Tembo, the eponymous boy's Overly Long Name is Tikki Tikki Tembo-no Sa Rembo-chari Bari Ruchi-pip Peri Pembo. When his brother Chang is out of breath, he calls him "Chari Bari Rembo Tikki Tikki Pip Pip".
- In The Top Secret Adventures Of Buttons Mc Ginty, Buttons keeps getting Lily Beth's name wrong, calling her things like "Lolly Breath", "Likky Beth", and "Lispy Breath". In the sequel book, he's gotten her name right, but an evil shopkeeper thinks Buttons's own name is "Buttocks", so he writes it on a "Wanted" poster, causing Lily to think he's changed his name and call him "Buttocks" herself.
- In VALKYRIE: Into The Heavens, Daniel Logan is hard to pronounce with a Japanese accent, as a result Michiko Hoshimoto ends up calling him Danii... The name sticks.
- In the Warrior Cats book The Silent Thaw, Bramblestar calls Dewnose "Dewtail" and has to be corrected. It's one sign that it's not really Bramblestar currently in that body.
- Early in Watership Down, there's a memorable scene where the Threarah accidentally refers to Hazel as "Walnut".
- The kids book Waymond the Whale features two whale siblings named Raymond and Elizabeth, but they can't pronounce certain letters and so call each other "Waymond" and "'Lithabeth".
- Where Are the Children?: After seeing the newspaper headline revealing she was once tried for murdering her children, a panicked Nancy runs outside and calls for Mike and Missy to come in, only to mistakenly refer to them as "Peter and Lisa", the names of her dead son and daughter.
- In the first Winnie the Pooh story, "Winnie-the-Pooh and Some Bees", the narrator thinks that Winnie-the-Pooh's name is simply "Winnie". His real name is Edward Bear, and he's Only Known By His Nickname.
