- Her name is Alexa Seary, but she won’t change her name
- People with the same name as Amazon’s or Apple’s assistant have to endure the jokes
- These people are sometimes bothered by connected devices that trigger with their names
Her first name is Alexa and her last name is Seary, which is pronounced like Siri, the assistant that Apple offers on its iPhones. And because of that, she, at some point in her life, went through hell. In 2017, Alexa Seary was 21 and according to an article published by the Huffington Post, she was going through a “waking nightmare”.
The teasing started after Apple launched Siri on its iPhones in 2011. Then the situation escalated when Amazon launched its Alexa assistant for connected speakers. When she worked in a restaurant, she received orders like a digital assistant. In addition to teasing, saying your first or last name can trigger connected assistants on iPhones and Amazon speakers.
Today, she is 27 years old, she lives in Pennsylvania (USA) and works in social media marketing. According to an article published by the British newspaper Metro, the jokes have died down and now she thinks her name is cool.
Alexa Seary won’t change her name
This name has even become useful, since it allows you to quickly break the ice when Alexa Seary meets new people. And according to the newspaper, she said she plans to keep her last name, even if she’s married.
However, although we are far from the “nightmare” described by the Huffington post article in 2017, this name still causes discomfort. Indeed, during videoconference meetings, people sometimes trigger their connected speakers by pronouncing their first name. “I feel bad when it’s a customer call and they’re all embarrassed”she says according to Metro.
In any case, this is not the first time that the media have mentioned the situation of people who are called Alexa or Siri. In an article published by the Washington Post in 2021, journalist Alexa Juliana Ard headlined: “Amazon, can we get our name back?”. According to this article, nearly 130,000 people living in the United States are called Alexa.
Of the 25 Alexa she interviewed for this article, a small number of people were indifferent or even amused. But the majority of these women were tired of interruptions by connected devices, and jokes.
We can also remember the viral story of a person named Siri who posted a letter asking Tim Cook for a computer. “I wrote a letter to the CEO of Apple asking for a computer because I feel like they owe me after enduring years of Siri pranks”she explained on TikTok.
