Names

I work in an international community. When you have several different languages and cultures colliding, sometimes it can be quite confusing. Name syntax is not straight forward, especially Asian names. Often new people in the department are called by their last name for the first few months. For example, Dr. R came to the department last fall. Everyone from the lab he was working in called him Dr. R for the first month, then shortened it to R. A month later, his lab mates realized his name was actually A, so while his coworkers were calling him A, the rest of the department was calling him R. I know full well that his name is A, but out of habit called him R yesterday. Afterwards, I thought how strange would it be to randomly be called 'Vail' by people I work with. I think that would even be funnier than being called 'Shally' for a month.