More Than Just A Name
By Harshdeep Kaur
Your name is important.
Yes, yours too – you with the particularly difficult name to pronounce!
Not only is your name one of the strongest links to your identity, but it is also a consistent and everlasting connection with your language and culture. Unfortunately, many of us have had a turbulent relationship with what our parents chose to name us. Our unique names with obscure sounds are not often melodious to the Western ear.
I was named Harshdeep. While a common enough name in the northern Indian state of Punjab, in Melbourne my name is frequently met with raised eyebrows and wrinkled foreheads.
In Punjabi, ‘Harsh’ means joy and ‘deep’ means light or brightness, yet my originally radiant name has become rusted through Western pronunciation. Many, including myself have succumbed to substandard pronunciations of our names or forced nicknames. Nicknames, formed not through affection but instead for the convenience of those who interact with us. For myself, this has been the norm for the better part of twenty-two years, yet I still find myself wincing whenever the name my parents bestowed upon me is cast aside or contorted into a lazy imitation of its true self.
Many of us with foreign names are familiar with the concept of a ‘coffee-shop name.’ We rebrand ourselves with simple names of European origin (I was Ruby) to save ourselves from an impromptu spelling lesson with the wait staff and to enjoy our coffee without an added shot of awkwardness. The convenience of my café alter-ego, Ruby, took hold of me and slowly, this seeped deeper into my personal life. I became Ruby to an entire circle of friends and introducing myself as Ruby felt spunky. My new name became my acceptance ticket into exclusive and previously unknown circles of the English-speaking world.
This feeling of new-found acceptance was not just my imagination. The ‘Name-Pronunciation Effect’ refers to the phenomenon where people tend to be more drawn to those with easy to pronounce names. The familiarity of easily pronounceable names encourages friendliness, whilst simultaneously leaving behind those with names that are difficult to pronounce. Often, something as simple as a name can determine bias that we place on an entire individual.
Nothing more than a foreign name can be translated into being treated as a foreign, othered individual.
For me, this became a difficult truth to face; the name my parents handpicked for me has left me with a social disadvantage that influences every new interaction I have.
This issue goes deeper than just the power to make a good first impression. Despite years of resentment towards my parents for my coarse/inelegant/non-white sounding name and my attempts to rebrand myself with a “normal” name, I have not been able to hate ‘Harshdeep’ as much as I wanted to. While my normal name enabled me to connect more easily with the English-speaking world around me, I lost just as many connections with myself. Afterall, my name is one of the oldest and strongest links I have to my identity. I learned to respond to my name even before I learned to speak.
Failing to pronounce a person’s name properly stems from a lack of knowledge. But, failing to make an effort not only indicates a lack of respect but also invalidates the identity of a person. Living in Melbourne, we are told that this is a city which prides itself on its multiculturalism and diversity - and, as a city we might indeed celebrate our differences when it comes to things such as our rich restaurant scene. Yet, when it comes to recognising individual identities as equally significant to one’s own, people too often stumble at the very first hurdle.
It cannot be denied that English is a globally dominant language from a cultural perspective. However, with this dominance, comes the power to influence which names are considered charming and which are decidedly unappealing and too difficult to pronounce. This in-turn influences our outlook on names. When we hear our migrant parents mutate the pronunciation of our friends’ names, we squirm, cringe, and hurriedly jump to correct them. Yet, we become timid when it comes to the pronunciation of our own names, as if seeking apology for the difficulty we are imposing upon those who say our names.
At this point, furiously raising our fists in the air and bellowing about the unjust disadvantages that colonial history has embellished upon millions of individuals with foreign names, while valid, does not get us very far. It becomes our responsibility to own our name; the way it is meant to sound and the connection it holds to our identity. When we take our name seriously, only then will the rest of the world follow suit. By holding onto our funny-sounding birth names, we bring them into the circle of familiarity and not only allow our true selves to shine more brightly but allow others to learn to see the beauty and grace in syllables and sounds they once considered alien.
