REPRESENTATION MATTERS.
“My biggest pet peeve is when people don’t take the time to learn how to pronounce other people’s names, which is why I appreciated a recent segment on the Ellen DeGeneres Show from comedian Hasan Minhaj.
Just a few seconds in, DeGeneres mispronounces his name, and Minhaj corrects her — making the audience laugh along the way. The moment teaches viewers why it’s so important to spend the time and effort to avoid mispronunciations.
“If you can pronounce Ansel Elgort, you can pronounce Hasan Minhaj,” he says.
Later on, he jokes that he uses the name Timothée Chalamet for his Starbucks orders.”
The other day a man came to install my internet in my new house and he told me about his wife. He said her name fast and then said “she usually goes by Mia though” and I thought about this post and wondered if the reason she went by Mia was because of the pronunciation thing. He said people thought his wife’s name was difficult. I asked him to repeat it literally one time, and then I said it. It wasn’t difficult. And then I got mad that I was right, because people shouldn’t have to change their names for the sake of others. I told him “people just need to try harder,” and his face lit up and he said “exactly!” And I think it made his day. This post genuinely helped me in real life make a positive change. A little effort goes a long way
They do this with white people who have non “English” names too. It’s like people have a set group of names that are acceptable and anything outside that is just not able to register in their tiny brains. My daughter is Saoirse, it’s Irish, it is pronounced Sear-sha, we currently live in Britain and no matter how many times she and I try to teach people how to say it she gets called Sarah or at best Sur-sha. It’s laziness. Ireland has more names like this and English speakers refuse to learn them. I cannot imagine what it is like with people from other cultures if they do this with a language and culture they try to pretend they own or are a part of.
