That’s Not How You Say My Name!

“Please welcome the wickedly talented one and only Adele Dazeem.” 

Twelve years ago, at the Oscars ceremony, John Travolta, while introducing Idina Menzel, mispronounced her name. That moment has since become a meme, a comical clip to look back at, or something to quote. As funny as that moment may be, do you ever stop and think about why names are mispronounced in the first place? 

Names are a major part of our identity. Whether it's the one you were given at birth or one you’ve chosen for yourself, it's the word people associate with you. So hearing your name mispronounced, no matter how much it might make you laugh, can still feel like a tear in your identity. 

Idina Menzel, or “Adele Dazeem,” might be one example. Still, data from Race Equality Matters reports that 73% of people have had their name mispronounced, 43% said it made them feel disrespected, 30% have said it made them upset, and 21% said it made them feel like they didn’t belong. 

Unfortunately, like most things, this issue can be traced back to colonialism. When countries were colonized and stripped of their culture, resources, and power, the people in those countries were stripped of their humanity since names were used as a tool to maintain control. Indigenous and African individuals were given simpler names because their “foreign” names were difficult for settlers to pronounce. 

Even though that might not be the exact case anymore, mispronouncing someone’s name or giving them a nickname because it's easier to say has the same effect. We think we are simplifying a word, but in reality, we are simplifying who that individual is. Rather than valuing understanding them, we are valuing our own convenience. 

As a society, we have normalized this. This can be observed through Starbucks baristas' infamously misspelling names or teachers skipping a name while calling attendance. We are still the products of the very same system we claim to have left behind. Names carry meaning. Many people who migrate carry connections through their names. Sometimes, a name is one of the only things that keeps them grounded in their identity in their new home. 

I can speak for myself that I, for one, never thought I had what is considered a “foreign” name until I immigrated to the United States. In first grade in Pakistan, there were four or five Alishbas in my class. My name, the same one my mom practically had on her vision board for eight months, was as common to me as the name Olivia is in the United States. Inherently, my name did not trip people up, that was, until I came here, where the irony happened to be that I struggled to pronounce words in a new language, where others constantly struggled to pronounce my name, which happened to be one word. 

Out of spite, I refused to let it be “Americanized” or shortened, because no other name sounded like me. And maybe a little part of that refusal was also rooted in the fact that my name truly has no nickname potential. But letting others tell me how my name was pronounced felt like giving up on my identity. 

Though everyone doesn’t have that luxury. Since this is the world we live in, sometimes nicknames become a way of survival. In hiring spaces, names on resumes are used as a way of racially profiling, which, even though it shouldn’t, impacts people’s candidacy. When my dad started a new job last year, he would tell customers his name was “Mike” (his name is Murad). I discovered this while looking at his freshly printed business card. At first glance, I thought he’d handed me someone else’s. I remember asking who Mike was, and I was met with “someone whose name people can pronounce and understand.” 

At first, I got mad at my dad. I inquired why he would change his already simple two-syllable name, and I quickly realized I wasn’t mad at him; I was mad at the society we live in for making him feel like he needed to change his name in order to be trusted, that he needed to fit himself into a mold so that people would feel comfortable with him. As an immigrant South Asian man, he couldn’t change how he looked, so he changed the one thing he had control over, one less thing making him “foreign.” 

This is why it’s important to ask someone how to say their name correctly when in doubt, it’s important to put in effort, and it's more important that, unless they prefer, we don’t simplify their identity through nicknames. Something as simple as any of these can have an unimaginable impact on people. Not only does it make others more comfortable, but it also makes us more comfortable in our own identity. One day, I hope my dad can feel that way. 

Because the irony happens to be that, when we try to make ourselves less “foreign” to others in hopes that they recognize us, we can’t recognize ourselves. We become foreign to ourselves.