No offense, but I’d say your claim of ‘not uncommon’ is rather inaccurate, and with an additional ‘r’ at the end, that would be even fewer people. Honestly, in all my life I’ve neither met nor heard of someone named either variant. (Though for the first one, a quick wikipedia search brings up two apparently-notable-enough people, a quick general search suggests overall it’s less than 500 out of the 84 million Germans. No result for the r-variant, and one news story about a guy struggling with his name being the German equivalent.)

I suppose “Niggemann” or similar would be more common, but also not terribly so, from my experience.

I am reminded of when, back in school, I considered an exchange year in the US. Exchange agencies hosted a bunch of info/prep events for potential exchangees, often with former participants sharing their experiences.

Probably the most unsettling piece of advice was to expect seemingly absurd questions from students there. Examples we were given included whether we have fridges here, or electricity in general, or if Hitler’s still around. (To clarify, this was late 2000s, I’m from Central Europe - hence Hitler - and those students would’ve been about 16.)

I also learned that “American History” is a complete, stand-alone high school subject and, from what I understood, isn’t necessarily backed up by a “General History”-type class, so that made the idea of internet-era teens asking such things somewhat more conceivable.

Going on that, I really hope you get an answer on the phone question. On the off chance that they are not just trolling, that would be some fascinating insight.

Also, obligatory-but-involuntary WhatsApp sucks so much!

(edit because formatting is hard)