It is pretty embarrassing when you've known a person for a little while but you either never asked their name or they told you once, you forgot, and never had the courage to ask them again. It's even more embarrassing when you think someone is named a certain thing for a long time and find out later that isn't their name at all. When I worked at Scholastic, there was a guy who talked to me every day at lunch who somehow got it in his head that my name was Bruce. I never corrected him, because he was a nice guy and I didn't really mind being called Bruce. One day he actually walked past my desk and saw my name written there. I didn't say anything about it, but afterwards he always called me Ben. He never said anything about it to me either. It was kind of disappointing, actually. I kind of enjoyed his confusion.