Care & Feeding: My Daughter’s Boyfriend Can’t Pronounce Her Name

[minoanmiss]

So instead he just calls her 'Sara'

My 21-year-old daughter is a beautiful, smart, and funny half-Black half-white young lady. She also has a very unique name that I can’t share for obvious reasons, but it’s an ethnic name from my husband’s home country. It can be a difficult name to pronounce if you’ve never seen it before, but once you’ve heard it a few times, it simply rolls off the tongue. So here’s the problem. She broke up with her longtime boyfriend and started dating a new guy last month and she really likes him, but I overheard him call my daughter “Sara.” When I confronted my daughter about it, she said that he does it because her name is too difficult for him to pronounce, so he decided to give her a nickname that starts with “S” as her real name does. Just to be clear, her real name sounds nothing like Sara, it just starts with the same letter. She doesn’t think it’s a big deal, but I’m completely outraged by this. Am I wrong? If I’m not wrong, how can I get it through to her that it’s disrespectful? Her new boyfriend is white, and I’m worried this is some sort of fetishization thing.


—Say It’s Not Sara

Dear Say It’s Not Sara,

This one hits close to home for me because I also have a difficult-to-pronounce name from my dad’s home country. The big difference is that it would be a cold day in hell before I allowed someone to call me “Doug” because it made life easier for them.

Although I have my assumptions, I’m not going to comment on whether he’s dating your daughter because of some creepy fetish; but I will certainly offer my opinion about his character. Very few things in life are more personal to humans than our names, and if her boyfriend won’t exert a ridiculously minimal amount of effort to learn your daughter’s name, it’s obvious that he doesn’t respect her.

I think it’s time to calmly sit your daughter down for an honest and serious conversation about your concerns. I would ask your daughter: If he’s unwilling to learn her name, then what makes her think he’ll love her and emotionally support her? Would she ever consider making up a name for any of her friends? What would her friends say if they found out about her boyfriend’s behavior? It is Level 10 disrespectful for him to behave this way toward her.

I would gently but firmly urge her to get on board with the idea that unless he starts calling her by her name, the relationship can’t continue. And I don’t think it’s too much for you to show your support for your daughter by letting her know that if he’s going to call her Sara, this guy is not welcome in your home. Hopefully she’ll snap out of it (show her this column if you need to), but this absolutely needs to stop.

More importantly, there must be some sort of a self-esteem issue going on here if she’s allowing this to happen in the first place. Perhaps the breakup with her longtime boyfriend made her question her worthiness, and that could be the root cause of the problem. You used a lot of accolades to describe her in your letter. Remind her of how amazing she is and that she should never settle for less than the best. Pronouncing her name correctly should be a given for anyone who decides to be in a relationship with her.

Comments

[shirou]

I first encountered the idea that mispronouncing a name was racial/racist a few years ago, and to be honest, it bowled me over. My family is Dutch, with a mix of Dutch and French names (lingering Napoleonic influence). We are all as white as mayonnaise. My branch of the family immigrated to the US. Nobody in the US can pronounce our names as we pronounce them, and we sometimes Americanize our own pronunciatiations to make ourselves understood. If a barista asks my name to write on a cup, I'll often give a false, easily recognizable name instead. I find Americans' inability to understand or pronounce my name at times annoying, frustrating, even exasperating, but also a natural and expected consequence of linguistic realities. It is not inherently disrespectful.

After personally dealing with a foreign (in the US) name my entire life, as a white person, I was shocked to learn that some people view this issue as racial. I struggle to understand how the situation would be different were I of African or other non-European descent. Americans' linguistic limitations would be the same. But I'm certainly interested to hear others' perspective on this.

Back to the letter. If LW's daughter indicated she wanted her boyfriend to learn to pronounce her name, then he would owe it to her to try. But it appears she hasn't said that. LW says her daughter is fine with the nickname, so I fail to see why it's a problem that her boyfriend uses it. My wife uses a gently Americanized version of my first name, cannot pronounce my middle name at all, and 14 years into our marriage, it hasn't been a problem yet.

[jadelennox]

After personally dealing with a foreign (in the US) name my entire life, as a white person, I was shocked to learn that some people view this issue as racial. I struggle to understand how the situation would be different were I of African or other non-European descent. Americans' linguistic limitations would be the same. But I'm certainly interested to hear others' perspective on this.

Racial microaggressions depend on context and audience, and it's an unfortunate reality that what's harmless in one context is part of a larger system in another. (Also there's a massive difference between a barista and a boyfriend, in terms of the amount of respect put into names.)

For some recent American context for why context matters here, and why mispronouncing a white person's name is different, and also for some social science research into the negative race-linked impacts of mispronouncing names:

David Perdue willfully mispronounces Kamala Harris' name at Trump rally - CNNPolitics

Are Blacks Names ‘Weird,’ or Are You Just Racist? (Don't be put off by the headline, please. The article is thoughtful and answers the exact question you're asking--it's not actually accusing people who don't know the answer to the question of racism.)

Yes, Pronouncing Kamala Harris' Name Correctly Is A Big Deal. Here's Why. | HuffPost


Understanding Name-Based Microaggressions | Psychology Today

Why getting a name right matters - BBC Worklife

Or, the funny take! Substitute Teacher - Key & Peele - YouTube

[petra]

I love you as much as I love J-Quillen.

[shirou]

Thanks for the links. Unfortunately the Daily Beast article is behind a pay wall. The other articles don't talk about the different experiences of white and non-white immigrants, but I still appreciated reading them. Key & Peele are hilarious. I have never in my life had a substitute teacher pronounce my name correctly. Actually I've never had one try. They would just get to it and pause: that was my cue to speak up.

A couple things jumped out at me. First, for all the talk about Kamala Harris' name, it actually is not at all difficult to pronounce. It's unfamiliar to a lot of people, so they'd have to hear it a couple times to get it right, but that's it. At least as I've heard it, the sounds are all part of normal English speech. (The people making a big deal out of it were just being racist dipshits, no question.) But not all names can learned so easily. Some can be genuinely difficult for English speakers to hear/say correctly. Even simple Dutch words contain diphthongs and other sounds my American friends cannot reproduce.

Second, these articles still use "Anglicize" and "whiten" as synonyms, and as a non-Anglican white person, that strikes me as awfully US/UK-centric. That's the core of my argument. I agree that name mispronunciation can feel minimizing—I have felt it myself—and I readily accept that this minimization intersects with other forms of racial and cultural minimization POCs experience. But I don't think name mispronunciation is inherently racial because non-Anglican white immigrants experience it too. (I will add the columnist didn't say this, exactly, but the jump to racial fetishism surprised me and made me recall seeing this discussion elsewhere.)

[minoanmiss]

The question of whether or not an action is racist is not a question which can be settled so academically nor so globally, I think, especially when racism is defined by effects rather than intentions (whether or not people of color are disadvantaged and/or harmed, rather than what someone "meant").

I could say a lot more but I am very, very tired.