Thunderbird lets you set a "nickname," so you can add any alias you want that helps you remember who's who. Creating whole groups seems kind of silly, but at least it gets the job done.

Before going to that length, if it's a person I don't often e-mail, I type their last name, or possibly their e-mail address (though people are increasingly using the first.last@ convention, which makes this moot).

ronocdh

I have gotten emails meant for executives before for my company...kind of funny!

jimmymac8088

Whenever my company deals with an external contractor with the same first name as me, there's always around two days of confusion before I pipe up and tell them "hey, you realize you're sending those emails to me and not them, right?"

stupid autocomplete.

engtech

People type in names instead of e-mail addresses? Who knew?

waffles

Having popular-first-name@gmail.com was one of the worst mistakes I've ever made.

I get this particular kind of spam from people who put the wrong name into their address book, or who give out the wrong email address. About 20 wrong emails every week, and there is no way to filter it because it isn't real spam.

engtech

Very timely. This morning, someone sent me a list of 101 "My d**k is so big..." jokes. I laughed at a few of them, and then decided to pass them along to my co-worker Ben, who sits across from me. I hit forward, typed B-E and fired the message off to Ben. After a few minutes of not getting any response from him, I asked if he'd seen my message.

When he said no, I realized (with a wave of nausea) that instead of sending the jokes to Ben, I'd just sent an email with a subject line of "My D**ck" to Beverley, who happens to be my mother-in-law.

Luckily I knew she was on an airplane this morning and likely hadn't seen the message yet. I was able to log into her webmail and delete the message.

Still, I could have done without that sinking feeling and the wave of panic that followed.

RickLiddle

I only know some peoples emails, not their real names...

Rich Bradshaw