Why does my iPhone show "Maybe" in Contacts for my wife's name?

Why would you edit my comments and take out the part about why apple would be so careless with messages and how this bug could cost someone their job and ruin their lives? Are you censoring any criticism of apple on this forum?

I have the exact same problem. All my texts to my husband also seem to go to his work phone. When I specifically text his personal line, it goes through but when I check my message history, it looks like I texted his work phone instead. I’ve tried blocking his work number, but it just pops back up. I’ve deleted and blocked his work phone, and it somehow still looks like he’s texting me and receiving texts from me from that number. I’m also iPhone 16 and iOS 18.1.1.

I am so frustrated with this too. I don’t want my texts to go to his work phone especially since he might eventually get a new work number!

What frustrates me is that there’s no way to know which phone iMessage is deciding to send the message to so now I have to be incredible careful with every message because it might go to her work phone. I also have countless contacts in my phone with multiple numbers each so I’m wondering where my messages are going. It’s incredible that threads like this go back months and apple has done nothing to fix such a critical component. They’re more worried about launching useless AI features instead of fixing a key component of their software.

Was this fixed for anyone? I’m now unable to text my husband’s personal number at all. All my texts go to his work phone even though his work phone is stored under a completely different name. I even deleted his work number from my contacts and it still goes to his work phone instead of his personal phone. The only way I’m able to send a text message to his personal phone is if I turn off iMessage. I have no idea what to do

Just texted back and forth with Apple Support about this exact thing (along with a few other issues with messages since doing the latest iOS update)! We tried everything but for some reason, I'm still showing up on my son's phone as a MAYBE. We couldn't figure it out. I was on with tech support for close to 2 hours!!

Thank you for this! The exact same thing was happening when my wife would text me. No matter what I tried it would always say maybe and it was driving me nuts. This is the ONLY thing that worked for me. Thank you

I get the Maybe: and then the name of husband in 2 different ways his professional name & pet name.

He has an iPhone uses AT&T has 2 numbers that’s what phone companies are doing. One for business one for social. When I get an iMessage or call it changes sometimes it’s his business number (ex: 3333) or social (ex: 2222) it changes the contact picture too.

I followed precisely what Apple told me to do and now his pet name and picture are gone. I did not change at all.

In settings under messages you can toggle between receiving messages under business 3333 & prof pic shows then toggles to 2222 his social phone his picture changes to his pet name.

After calling Apple following the community fix information does not work. Now I’m missing his pet pic. In addition to toggling from one number to the other I’ve lost 8 months of important texts & pictures. They are totally gone.

I want this CORRECTED this has caused multiple arguments. It appears being slick cheating or just a HORRIBLE MESS APPLE HAS CREATED!!!! I need this corrected ASAP PLEASE

Finally found a thread with the exact same issue that has been ******* me off for week. Like everyone else this issue is with my wife, who is the only person I text daily. My issue is slightly unique. She had a number on her contact that I have no idea how it got there, so I removed it. Now every time she sends a text, it’s her name plus Maybe: <Old Number>. I’ve tried everything. Can’t get it to go away.

Having the same issue and it's getting really annoying because it keeps deleting messages between me and my dad as I have to remove duplicate text threads. Our situation is complicated because he has two iPhones (one for work, one for personal use), and it's been a MAJOR headache trying to figure out what the source of this issue is.

Same issue, with messages coming from wife’s iPhone. So annoying. Have not been able to fix yet.

Thank you Seahorsepuppy, I submitted a bug report for both the contact issue and the Car Play issue.

I have the same issue that started for me when my daughter texts me. It started right after we upgraded phones and iOS.

Happens with my wife too!

This started happening after I started to share my iCloud storage too I never thought about that