Graphic by Anjali Rao-Herel ‘22
By Kaveri Pillai ’23
Staff Writer
With over 7 billion people engaging with approximately 7,000 languages, the world we live in is becoming more diverse. Differences in faith, religion and socioeconomic status create a sense of organic solidarity in which every individual on Earth has a unique role to play. The duty to unite and establish harmony in this pool of heterogeneity comes with an enormous amount of responsibility.
It is inevitable that, with so much variety, one starts to question their authentic self. Genetic composition, family and names — these three elements help determine one’s personal history and co-constitute one another. The name-giving process has deep roots in culture and self-identity. Unfortunately, with the rise of globalization and this incessant need to create uniformity, we are losing the authenticity of names, especially the proper ways to pronounce them.
With a myriad of ethnicities worldwide, it is understandable that one cannot attain knowledge of every group and every culture. However, this cannot be used to justify the sheer ignorance that is present while attempting to understand the importance of names. The Namkaran ceremony in Hindu rituals is a symbol of the celebration of birth with the name-giving tradition. Astrological charts are aligned to produce a name so prosperous that it is a gift from God to the child who is about to take their first steps into the world. So when Republican Senator David Perdue intentionally mispronounced Vice President-elect Kamala Harris’ name, he didn’t just manage to show to the world how deeply immersed he is in his Anglicized racism — he robbed Harris of her identity.
By adding the culturally deteriorating phrase, “I don’t know. Whatever,” to get a few cheap laughs from the political rally, Perdue diminished the value of a Namkaran ceremony in which the name given to the child represents the auspicious nature of their arrival and how prosperous their journey and identity will be.
This particular example from last month echoes the historical Western ideal of accepted names, which we still follow today. What might have started with the wave of colonization and the degradation of people as slaves has slowly transitioned into the 21st century McDonaldization realm in which Starbucks will invariably print “Karen” on my coffee cup. It’s not just the pure laziness of refusing to improve or be receptive that bothers thousands of people, but that this belief of “usual” and “unusual” names is so deeply-rooted in a majority of people that raises concerns.
Colonization marked the plundering of resources, manpower and even native identity. Pre Emancipation, enslaved Africans were given names by slave owners in the United States that were supposedly easier to pronounce and identified them as slaves. Indian workers pre-independence were given first names recorded in public records to reaffirm their status as people who didn’t even have the right to keep their own names. This transition from mispronouncing given names to completely obliterating them has repercussions in today’s world, too.
Xiaohui Xu ’24 said, “As a Chinese [person], there is a reason why I use an English name instead of my given Chinese name. I know it’s hard for English speakers to pronounce the Chinese name right since the ‘x’ phonetic doesn’t exist in the English language. For the sake of convenience, I’ve decided that for the school[’s] purposes, I will use ‘Amanda,’ which is my English name.”
Moreover, not putting effort into accurately pronouncing names is not a problem solely faced on an international level. Saee Chitale ’22 said, “All my life, I’ve struggled with people back at home pronouncing my name improperly. Every time a person has read out a list of people and have paused, it has invariably been my name that has created this confusion.” Sadly, the issue of mispronunciation reinforces the Western idea of “normal” names as the uniform setting that all ethnic groups refer to, regardless of where you are from.
Often, children of nursery school age in countries like India use names like “Sam” and “Molly” while writing about villagers in their country. While this might seem to be a result of immaturity or even innocence, it is important to acknowledge that this idea of “accepted” names creeps into children’s thinking from an early age. This standard diminishes the stories and even the existence of people who simply don’t operate in the restricted Western world.
Mount Holyoke College’s implementation of name recordings on Moodle, our primary academic platform, helps tackle the problem of name pronunciation. It allows professors and students the opportunity to respect others by addressing them accurately. While this might be a small step toward shattering the power dynamic that dictates what is or is not accepted, the world needs to become more aware of cultures that go beyond their narrow circle of traditions to fulfill that responsibility of creating harmony.