Peak hour at the coffee shop; it’s a scene I know you’re familiar with. There’s a queue of busy people waiting to place their coffee orders, and a bigger group of even busier people (you know this because everyone has a phone in their hand) waiting to collect the coffees they’ve already ordered. It’s crowded. It’s loud. The place is buzzing.

It’s a system, and you definitely don’t want to be the one to put a spanner in its works. So when your turn to order comes you step up confidently. You know what you want; you’re ready to go.

‘Skinny double hot chocolate with a shot of caramel,’ you say. But that’s not the embarrassing bit. No, that comes when the person behind the counter asks for your name.
‘Gayle.’
‘Sorry?’ He says, but you know he’s not. ‘Did you say Dale?’ Marking pen is poised.
‘No. Gayle,’ you reply, louder.
‘Daly?’
‘No. Gayle!’ By this time more people than you’d like are glancing in your direction. And everyone’s looking slightly uncomfortable – except the order taker who earlier had seemed just bored but who now looks cranky.

Having had this experience more often than I cared to, I decided several years ago to make life – mostly mine – easier, and adopt the coffee name ‘Marsha’ (think Brady Bunch). It was easier to say and much easier to hear over the noise of a very busy coffee shop. (As it turns out, Marsha wasn’t a perfect choice – I’ve collected cups marked ‘Marta’, ‘Martia’ and even once ‘Martian’ which I acknowledge I did like, a lot).

In Italy, of course, there are (almost) no take-away coffee shop orders. Everyone drinks at the counter or at a table, so there’s no need for the inconvenience of names. But when it comes to other parts of Italian life – booking a restaurant or a haircut for example – you have to give a name.

And it turns out that Italians have even more trouble with ‘Gayle’ than your average Australian coffee shop order taker. It’s the ‘ay-ee’ – the double-vowel-in-a-single-syllable sound, the diphthong – that’s the problem. For a start, the letter ‘y’ doesn’t exist in the Italian language (though they do have a name for it), so the chances of people being able to spell, or even pronounce, ‘Gayle’ are pretty slim.

So after three months here I found myself in need of an alternative name. Not a ‘coffee’ name now, but rather a ‘booking’ name. And what did I choose? Anna. It’s short, it’s easy and, importantly, it’s common. So no more problems trying to get people to understand ‘Guy-luh’; no more having to spell ‘Gee-ah-ipsilon-elle-ay’. Now it’s just a straightforward ‘Anna’ and everyone’s happy. Well, almost. It’s about the surname…