I set up my Google Voice number to forward to my AT&T number, but when I get texts from some people, the text appears to come from phone numbers I don’t recognize. The text message itself begins with the phone number the text is coming from, but even though that number is in my contact list, the message does not offer me the name of the person. I have an iPhone 4 and I'm running iOS 6.1. Any help is appreciated. Added for clarity: What google voice or iPhone settings can I change so that ideally a) the arriving text displays the sender's name rather than some obscure number (not their number) or somewhat less ideally b) the body of each text message is prefaced by the contact's name rather than their phone number. Perhaps b) can be done by entering iPhone contacts as google contacts?
Origin of some texts aren’t identified when Google Voice forwards text to phone
google-voice
Best Answer
It is supposed to do that so that when you reply Google can get your response, save it to Google Voice, then route the text to the person you wanted. Otherwise it would go straight to the number and Google would not be able to record it to your inbox in Google Voice.
http://support.google.com/voice/answer/117605
The number that shows up does not change for and is specific to your account and the number they sent the text from. So you can add it to your contacts, but it will only work for you.