Email address being used by someone else?

[RealLifeMama]

I have recently been sent a few emails that say "verify your email address" for dating sites and prepaid credit cards.
When I hover over the links (not clicking) the address in the lower left corner is the actual site it should be, not some random letters/numbers like when I get phishing emails from banks and stuff.
The dating ones just say "guest" but the credit card ones have a first name.

I have a "." in my gmail because I am pretty sure when I first set up my gmail, what I wanted was not available without a dot, but the odd thing is that if I try to log in without a dot, it still takes me to my account. And the other odd thing is that my account has my husband's first name attached to it because he used it one time for something google-y and put his name in and it attached it to the account and it had never had a first name before.

I don't really use my gmail account ever, I just have it because I have android devices and well, as much as I'd love to *not* have a google id, I haven't figured out how not to have one and still get to see people's docs they share through google docs. (that is the catch, right?)

Anyway, have any of you experienced this? I don't know if someone is playing a joke, or if someone is doing something nefarious, or if I should just cancel my google id and just start over, or what. A long time ago, I thought I'd use this account, so I did subscribe to some blogs and stuff, so it is possible that those lists were sold or hacked or whatever, but that does not explain the lack of a "dot" in the address (as an amyX as opposed to amy.X in the address.)
What would you do? I changed my password a couple of weeks ago, and will change it again.