They used to call me Ray Ray or Ragu in high school (even better, they called me Rahulk).

What about the counterpoint? South Asians parents in this country who chose Anglo names for their non-Christian offspring because "it will be good for business". It's common among Chinese and Korean immigrants, but we've resisted in large measure.

I kinda liked the Newsweek cover from the March that was titled "When Barry became Barack".

Monty

2 · id888 said

What about the counterpoint? South Asians parents in this country who chose Anglo names for their non-Christian offspring because "it will be good for business". It's common among Chinese and Korean immigrants, but we've resisted in large measure.
I kinda liked the Newsweek cover from the March that was titled "When Barry became Barack".

How pervasive is this among South Asians? I have yet to encounter a non-Christian Desi with a given Anglo name. There have been quite a few with Anglicized knicknames, though.

heh, people always tried to anglicize my name too, but i always resisted it even though i thought i had an ugly name!

imagine my trauma - i was given a muslim "good" name but my home name is anglo (for no good reason besides that it rhymed with my sister's bengali good name). in school, when i was taunted for my foreign name my 6 year old brought in my anglo home name to avoid the teasing (and because it was more familiar to me). 15 years later, i began to reclaim my good name but a lot of the damage has already been done!

(i think i shouldve posted that in a "Namesake" thread...)

I haven't heard the NPR story - but this particular example is not so much about name changing - as changing the spelling. Spanish, English, French cultures have some common names, which are spelt differently, partly because they are in fact pronounced differently, though they are essentially the same name. So Ramon/Raymond/Ramond/ = Spanish/English/French.
Also: Juan/John/Jean etc. -- so no big deal, even lame, but since it is about spelling, that would be the other thread :)

This is nowhere comparable to getting yourself a new name (like Piyush -- Bobby). However, it does illustrate the profound steamrollering hegemonic homogenization that characterizes aspects of American culture. :)

Many Desi parents in the US will give their kids names like Anjali (to sound like Angie or Angelina), Megha, "Anita" or "Nikki" (short for Nikita) or Priyanka (a very popular Desi name these days and rhymes with "Bianca"), Sue (short for Sushma etc) or Neil (for the boys) or Ryan (short for Narayan). Those Sanskrit names and others are easily Anglicized. The Desi parents (that I know) feel it will be easier for non Desis to pronounce and easy to remember. Now those are all beautiful names but I think they are being over used and not as unique anymore. I totally respect that adorable Sanjaya Malakar for keeping his full name! Same thing for his sister Shyamala - and that's a name which would be considered even more difficult for the average non Desi American to pronounce. Of course, it is a free world and you can give your kid or yourself any name you want but a little creativity is good.

All desi born in 2009 be named Bobby after the new vice president

one of my faiba's name is Lilavati, uncle calls her, Lil.

We named our daughter Saachi but it is still butchered_ "sasha,sashi,eveny saykee'. But 90 percent of the ppl get it and pronounce it perfectly. We picked the name however, not for its pronounceability but because my wife had always wanted this name for our daughter. Its not a common Sikh name, so we initially got some quizzical looks from other family members....

OK, must also put in a good word for the hegemonic homogenization. Out in Old Europe, in regions on the boundaries between Cyrillic and Roman script hegemony - even funnier things happened. The Polish alphabet, for example, largely uses the Roman script, but with additional diacritical symbols and a noticeably different enunciation convention, and a much lighter vowel-density.

Would you really rather someone tried to spell himself 'Andrzej' when the name is pronounced 'Andrei', or would you rather he gave up the ghost and became 'Andrew', or at least spell it within the accepted transliteration conventions,as 'Andray' ? And this is the easiest example I can think of.

The Chinese, to take another example, created more problems with their 'X's and 'Z's than even the Poles. 'Xang' is better than 'Chang'? Really? For whom?

I had a friend with the last name 'Xing' - and people would simply read it as 'Crossing'. Time after time.

So some hegemonic homogenization may not be bad after all.:)

I purposefully go by a shortened name because I myself got sick and tired of teaches and classmates mispronouncing it, and I still get a little bit irritated by people mispronouncing it.

Non-desis see "Nikhil" and say "Nukheeeel", "Mikhail", "Neekhile", "Nickel" (Nickel!? C'mon!)

So the policy is "Nikhil" around Desis, and "Nick" around non-Desis.

I appreciate immigrant parents who carefully consider implications and spellings when naming their American-born child. The problem is that most desi parents don't seem to realize that the transliterations of their names into English, with weird spellings that don't reflect how NATIVE English speakers pronounce words (especially vowels), will lead to problems. My name, Kedar, is fine in India where everyone in the interest of standardization recognizes "e" as the dipthong "ay" (as in "bay" or "say"). But in the US, Canada and England, the letter "e" is usually NOT a dipthong, and everyone calls me "Kee-dar" or "Keh-dar" or "Kuh-dar".

A better spelling for my name, in terms of how native English speakers pronounce letters (especially vowels) would be: "Kay-dar" or even "Quedar" (which means "to stay or remain" in Spanish).

In the end, I was mocked mercilessly in school. Kedar Radar Darth Vader, they used to call me. Oh, the horror.

One of my distant cousins who recently immigrated named his kid "Archit," which is either a short form of 'architect' or a horribly easy opening for kids to call him "Are-shit." Oh, how could my cousin be so dumb?

One of my distant cousins who recently immigrated named his kid "Archit,"

On that subject, this is actually a name. And, it's not pronounced 'Skitter'.

'Archit' is actually pronounced closer to the sound of 'Urchin' - means 'chosen' or 'selected' or 'prayed for' - not giving anybody ideas on what to call him!

hardik, anyone?

i do see the benefit of changing names, esp. when the existing names are so hard to pronounce in your daily environment. my dad moved to kansas from india in the early 1960s, so he became jack. and it's interesting because now that name change has gone all the way from the states back to india - even the cousins he grew up with, all his nieces/ nephews etc. call him only by his english name. my mother also uses variations on her indian name. but oddly (hypocritically?) they get a bit upset when they see their or others' kids doing the same.

on the other hand, pronunciation (and spelling) has def. been a consideration for all my friends who have chosen baby names recently. of course, it limits the options, but it's still a nice compromise.

The punchline in this one is really quite good. My dad's name is Bharat, and initially, he allowed his coworkers to mispronounce it without complaint, until his name morphed into Brad. Similarly, I have a cousin Ravi who let people mangle the pronunciation of his name until they started calling him Robbie. I like that, in both cases, these were turning points for them to actually correct everyone and force them to actually say their names properly.

On a different note, it's really nice when StoryCorps gets a bit more diverse- I love the series, but I've complained before that it doesn't capture all the 'faces' of America, so it's nice to see more of that incorporated.

4 · delurker said

2 · id888 said

What about the counterpoint? South Asians parents in this country who chose Anglo names for their non-Christian offspring because "it will be good for business". It's common among Chinese and Korean immigrants, but we've resisted in large measure. I kinda liked the Newsweek cover from the March that was titled "When Barry became Barack".

How pervasive is this among South Asians? I have yet to encounter a non-Christian Desi with a given Anglo name. There have been quite a few with Anglicized knicknames, though.

(raises hand) Non-Christian Desi with an anglo name. Most of my cousins have anglo names as well, although our middle names are very south asian. It has gotten quite ridiculous now though - i have nephews named christian and nicolai.......nicolai??? really??? Having had the experience i think my kid (*gasp*) would have a South Asian name.

15 · chachaji said

On that subject, this is actually a name. And, it's not pronounced 'Skitter'.

We are all Schitters.

Still somewhat irritated and mostly amused by the person who a few days ago insisted on calling me Marjorie after I taught her how to read the name she carried on her clipboard. More interesting when you consider that she and I live in a different, culturally-complex city with street names like Tchoupitoulas and Melpomene and women named Clotilde and Aquanette.

So to make things easier for cust. service reps who never seem to spell my name right(Bhavana)..I started spelling out my name as "Havana with a 'B' in the front." So much to my chagrin, they started calling me Bee-Havana!
Ranting to my friends about this wasn't such a bright idea. So now everyone calls me 'BeeHavaana'. *sigh*

Mytri==My3
heh heh heh

atleast his name is not anal patel...or anus ibrahim

My third grade teacher tried to anglicize my name. I said he couldnt. He said hed call me "bob". I responded with "if you call me bob, ill call you *sshole". he sent me to the principals office. My dad has to come in. My dad called the teacher *sshole. and said, if u cant pronounce my sons name, we cant pronounce your name.

chachaji's point is important. mikhail to michael or daoud to david is qualitatively different from anil to neil. additionally, one reason that chinese take "western" names is that there is just no way that non-chinese speakers can pronounce their names. not only that, sometimes the way that westerners pronounce their names in terms of the tones make them sound like words beside their name (e.g., how'd you like to have your name mispronounced as "bath-tub" or something?).

p.s. i put "western" in quotes because these names have diverse origins. some are semitic (david, michael), some greco-roman (julia, alexander) and some are northern european of various roots (e.g., eric, william). additionally, there is always a new crop of names with no antecedants which become really popular for a bit.

also, check out popular baby names
http://www.ssa.gov/OACT/babynames/

interesting how much more prevalent hebrew origin names are for boys in the top 10, sure it's a coincidence.

6 · ensure said

imagine my trauma - i was given a muslim "good" name but my home name is anglo (for no good reason besides that it rhymed with my sister's bengali good name). in school, when i was taunted for my foreign name my 6 year old brought in my anglo home name to avoid the teasing (and because it was more familiar to me). 15 years later, i began to reclaim my good name but a lot of the damage has already been done!
(i think i shouldve posted that in a "Namesake" thread...)

Interesting. So hte bhalonaam and daaknaam is a Bengali thing? But then daaknaams as a rule, even when they make sense, are sort of Anglo isn't it? Imagine the plight of the middle-aged man whose mom insists on calling him PomPom in front of his children!

This careful pronounicng of the name isn't simply an America thing. In my college Sanskrit class our professor Parambil Francis Davies inisted on sanskritising our friend Ashfaaq to - Ashvak!

Really most south asian names are pretty easy to pronounce. Most are pronounced as they are spelled - most south asian languages being phonetic and all.

I really, really dont understand why it is so hard for a non-desi to pronounce simple names. Why each and every name has to brutally butchered.

I am 8 months pregnant and am seriously thinking what to name the child - something that is indian, that is not too indian but is not completely non-desi.

I think its a difficult balancing act. But what also irks me is that I have to take into account all aspects in naming my child and even if I do, some idiot will come along and butcher it no matter what. Go figure!

I have a Sri Lankan name (another variant is more common, but mine isn't unusual) that converts perfectly to an American name if you stress the syllables differently. Anglicized spelling is the same too.

So I'm in the unusual position of facing skepticism when people ask me for my "real" name. blargh.

Anyway, the toughest name to bear, I think, is Sheetal. People always seem to pronounce it "shit-all".

Thankfully I don't have any experience with people trying to, well, 'Dutchify' my name. Unfortunately, the Anglo spelling of Indian names means that people whose native language is not English will pronounce those names in their own tongue. So 'Meena' becomes 'Mayna' and 'Meenakshi', well, impossible! Luckily most people take the trouble to pronounce my name properly in it's original form, including teachers. In fact, the only person who insisted on calling me 'Meena', saying as an excuse that she couldn't pronounce my full name, was a British lady! I usually go by 'Meena' because that's what my parents call me, and it's easier to remember for the Dutch. Unfortunately most of the time(except with my close friends) I'm still 'Mayna'!

This isn't a problem exclusive to Indian names though - Chinese names get the same treatment. Unlike in the States, the Chinese here are much more traditional and they stick to original Chinese names instead of attempting to give their children Dutch names. There's the hypothetical 'Vijay Bajaj', an inside joke among my parents and their friends, whose name gets the 'J' treatment - all the 'J's are made to sound like 'Y's! And of course there's the guttural 'G' and 'R' - my Italian highschool classmate Gaia had to correct teachers time and time again because they mangled her name into something unrecognisable!

Just to add to my post, I'm shocked that so many Americans have so much difficulty pronouncing the simple, largely phonetic Indian names. I always thought that the Anglo spelling was the biggest hurdle to overcome, but that shouldn't be a problem in the states no?

Hey... it isnt just a desi issue. Think of all the Ho's and the Fuchs out there. My personal desi favorite is Nishit. But I've even known some desis torment a person named iqbal for his solitary hair.

one reason that chinese take "western" names is that there is just no way that non-chinese speakers can pronounce their names.

I can't speak for all, but my sister in law who's Hong Kong Chinese said that her English teachers at school made her class give themselves English names. For a while she was Carol and then later she changed her name to Sophia (even though her given name is very easily pronounceable). Some of her friends keep changing their English names whenever they change jobs ...

A friend once kept calling me "sonar" as that's what his spell check kept changing it to ...

No one tried to give me an Amercanized name in school, even though no one could ever pronounce it (I'm a Sandhya) Most non-Desi people pronounce it San-dee-ya, which also means watermelon in Spanish, so I got called watermelon by the Latino kids a lot. Ironically, my family has called me Sandy since I was born, hardly any of them call me by my full name

My personal desi favorite is Nishit. But I've even known some desis torment a person named iqbal for his solitary hair.

Nishit Dikshit.

My father-in-law, Ravi, was apparently asked at work if he'd mind being called Robbie. His response was "no, as long as you don't mind if I call you Bhupinder". That one cracked me up.

I find that just about every 2nd Indian boy in the last 10 years has been named Rohan, presumably because its assumed it is easy to pronounce. My son has a cousin and 2 friends at his school with that name, and I know at least 3 other recent Rohans among our family friends. The irony is that at school they are called everything from "Rohin" to "Rohaan". In fact, we use the different pronunciations ourselves when talking about them just to make it easier to differentiate them.

My name is Bhasker. I found out waaaay back when I was at University of Cincinnati in sixties that Americans cannot pronounce BH correctly. They would called me bahasker or basker or such silly name. Part of the problem is there is not one word in English dictionary that starts with Bh. There was hound of Baskerville, but not Bhaskerville. My dad always called me by my nickname "Bako". So I stopped these yankees butchering my name any further and adopted "Bob" only in verbal conversation. To this day, I am known as Bob except of course among Desis. I still get mails addressed to me as Bob Tripathi. You know what? Americans are lazy. They don't even seriously try to learn and pronounce foreign name correctly. It's the ugly American attitude I guess !! My sympathy to Brimful@ 17.

Perhaps it's time to lighten up. How many Syriac Christian Malayalis do you know -- don't you know, more like -- in India who were hassled for their funny names growing up in North India and chose "Indian"-sounding pseudonyms to avoid getting beaten up on Bombay playgrounds? Surely it's the same for Muslims....

YoDad writes: >>Part of the problem is there is not one word in English dictionary that starts with Bh

It's more than that - there is no non-Indian language in the world that has any word starting with "Bh". Go ahead - check your white pages. The only names that start with "Bh" are Indian names (and Pakistani derivates of Indian names like Bhutto etc).

Bh is unique only to, you know, Bharat.

M. Nam

I received this in my email today! Taking about giving yourself an Anglicized name!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cvtWAXoZjTc

Keeping in theme (and because it's Friday) - courtesy of the good folks from Goodness Gracious Me ...

A better spelling for my name, in terms of how native English speakers pronounce letters (especially vowels) would be: "Kay-dar" or even "Quedar" (which means "to stay or remain" in Spanish).

Your medicine is worse than the disease: first, you cannot tell whether people like men or women if your kaydar is switched off. Second, all Quedars are on the no-fly list.

What about saying that "Kedar" rhymes with "Seder"?

My name is a relatively rare old sankrit word. In principle, not hard to pronounce.. however its not spelt in an exactly phonetic way. i have groups of mutually exclusive friends who say my name in slightly different friends. then, when they meet each other they feel vaguely guilty that they've been mispronouncing my name for years.. hehe

What about the counterpoint? South Asians parents in this country who chose Anglo names for their non-Christian offspring because "it will be good for business".

How pervasive is this among South Asians? I have yet to encounter a non-Christian Desi with a given Anglo name. There have been quite a few with Anglicized knicknames, though.

Oh please I don't know too many people who HAVE given their kids a desi name. I've lost track of the number of Ethans and Dylans and Ryans. WTH. This is a huge peeve with me. I've questioned my close friends and the answer I got was "Oh it will make their life easier, they won't get judged, they won't have problems on applications." Really? What about the last name then? What are you going to do with the Patel or Mehta or Shah or Joshi? And they seemed to do just fine and get ahead successfully in life so what's the deal with giving their kid crutches? Look I'm fine if someone tells me "F you I'm naming my kid whatever I want" but I can't help but judge them. That's just me.

Americans can be lazy. They butcher my freaking name Rupaul, Aruba, Rubal, Rappa, Ruth (freaking ET on the Universal Studios tour called me Ruth) when I clearly wrote and said R U P A when I entered. I'll correct you 3 times after that you are up shit creek. Either I will ignore you or I'll go apeshit on you. My husband and his brother don't have shortened versions of their long ass very desi names and their parents used to tell them that if someone butchered their name or changed it or teased them about it punch em hehehee. Every single one of their non Indian friends says their respective names right. That's what I'm going to teach my kids. Someone try to change your names to something else you better let them know that's not ok.

Many IBDs(the really fresh kind) screw up western names too.

We have a IBD at work who calls

Graham (pronounced Gra-am) as Gra-haam.
Charles (pronounced CHAR-ulls) as Char-less
Zane as JAne
Yvonne as Vy-won

Its sometime tough even among desis.
In college my roommates was this 5' 2'' guy named ParikShit. The starting letter of poor guys name was permanently changed from "P" to "B" !

I think it's true that there has been a lot of laziness in the past with corresponding pressure to change names but I do think that there is much more openness in North America these days towards non-Anglo/Anglicized names. At the very least, there seems to be more of a trend these days to view such names as exotic rather than straight up weird (leaving aside some of the more unfortunate sounding homonyms). But a number of the 2nd gens with kids do seem scarred enough by their childhood experiences to try to want to avoid that fate for their offspring (some who will, no doubt, will bitterly rail against their "stupid and boring and now I won't be able to get a job in India" names once they hit puberty)--plus it's way easier to buy personalized souvenir licence plates for the kids' rooms.

I also agree that the laziness is a human trait -- wherever there is enough of a mainstream sound, you'll see resistance/inability to incorporate foreign phonemes.

For myself, these days, I figure if the North American in question is willing to give "Siobhan" or "Sinead" a pass (which they almost always are), then they can damn well take the time to broaden their horizons regarding other less Anglo names.

For myself, these days, I figure if the North American in question is willing to give "Siobhan" or "Sinead" a pass (which they almost always are), then they can damn well take the time to broaden their horizons regarding other less Anglo names.

It reflects on the culture you grow up with i suppose. In a city where one would bump into a casimir, a hongsook, a kulsoom, a moredechai around the next corner... a khoofia isnt such a big deal. :-)

In the grown up world, the ability of Americans to say your name correctly is directly proportional to your net-worth. Not too many Americans complain about Japanese names. The fact that so many Chinese have an alternate name conveys low self-esteem.

I find it quite irritating too when people in the US mispronounce my (real) name, and it's quite an easy one too. Having said that, we Indians do it to each other all the time. Northies cannot pronounce some of the longer Southie names; I am not sure if the reverse occurs because Northies usually have easier names.

Then there is the issue of accents and dialects. My mother called our maid "Chanda" for a long time. Turned out, the maid was really saying her name was "Shondha" which was "Sandhya" in a thick Bengali accent.

Yo Dad, you and my dad would have a lot of war stories to exchange! ;)

In defense of some Americans, I have had some Caucasian friends express sincere wounded feelings that I didn't teach them to say my name properly. They didn't know until other desi friends said my name properly in their presence, and then they felt foolish for having mispronounced it for so long.

It's really a tightrope-- on the one hand, I am not ashamed of my name and have no desire to anglicize it. On the other hand, I don't feel like saying my name 10 times to get someone to say it properly. So if they come close on the 2nd attempt, I usually let it go at that.

p.s. great_escape @44:

My family insists on pronouncing Yosemite National Park as "Yashomati National Park." :)

The fact that so many Chinese have an alternate name conveys low self-esteem.

From David Chase to ulysses grant, americans have bent their names for various reasons. Sometimes it's a matter of progressing in one's profession and sometimes it's about creating a brand presence.

46 · ente said

For myself, these days, I figure if the North American in question is willing to give "Siobhan" or "Sinead" a pass (which they almost always are), then they can damn well take the time to broaden their horizons regarding other less Anglo names.

True, although you should probably also broaden your horizons to the point where you can perceive the irony of calling Irish names "Anglo" in the midst of a complaint about cultural sensitivity. Unless you meant that said names are themselves "less Anglo," although that's not how I read it...

Speaking of butchering Desi names, I am sure everyone has heard of Parthasarathy becoming "Ports Authority" and then "Subramaniam" transformed to "Sub marinian". The mispronounced names are harder to say than the originals (at least for me.).

I remember an incident at my husband's work. One day he and his group were having a teleconference with a group from Indonesia. One of the Indonesians had the name "Mohammed Butt" and the Goras kept asking the 2 Hindus (my husband was one of them.) how is the name really pronounced. Was it Boot or Byut or what? Then later one of the Goras quipped, "Mohammed is not to be confused with his brother Harry."

It really happened and I don't think I want to get into the Telugu surnames. (I am a Telugu so I get teased all the time about Telugu names by my Kannadaga hubby.)

14 · CondeKedar said

One of my distant cousins who recently immigrated named his kid "Archit," which is either a short form of 'architect' or a horribly easy opening for kids to call him "Are-shit." Oh, how could my cousin be so dumb?
"

Perhaps his name can be shortened to Archie.

I think the kids today (at least at the elementary school level) are a bit more tolerant of different names. My daughter has a very traditional Hindu name and she has never been singled out (at least not yet.) or gotten any grief for being a Hindu with a typical Hindu name etc. Things have really changed for the better since the early and mid 70's when I was growing up. I think the kids today are definitely more enlightened although there are exceptions I am sure.

Then later one of the Goras quipped, "Mohammed is not to be confused with his brother Harry."

Precisely the kind of statement that loses business deals and job offers. Why poke fun at someone's name just because it's unfamiliar?

56 · pingpong said

Then later one of the Goras quipped, "Mohammed is not to be confused with his brother Harry."

Precisely the kind of statement that loses business deals and job offers. Why poke fun at someone's name just because it's unfamiliar?

I don't understand it either. That is a question that needs to be directed to that Gora dude who made the "joke" and other people who make jokes like that.

When people poke fun at different races/names/customs, it is usually because they are insecure with their own selves and lives and it makes them feel superior. Throughout elementary, junior high and high school, I was occasionaly ridiculed to my face about having a Hindu name and not being Christian, and so on. I'd get questions like "Aren't you ever going to have a first communion?" or "Hindus don't eat cows because they think that might be their ancestors?" and other ignorant statements.

Although I was not at the conference, I believe that comment was not heard by the Indonesians and the computers/cameras/phones were off. So I don't think any deal was made or broken on account of that statement. Usually after encounters like these, I wish I could have said, "Cut the racist crap". In fact, I need to say it to many of my own relatives but that's another story.

I bet they don't call you Abhishek or even Abhi. Right Abeey ?

can i just say i

also the name bastardisation goes both ways...i have a v non-indian name indeed and when i finally finally finally got to pick my own name for my confirmation instead of a saint's name i chose priya (=love, so close enough as all saints really should have been all about it anyway)...

and then my big mo' got totally ruined cos with the nz accent it sounded like 'prayer' ie the word and not the lovely, gorgeous name (also the name of a cousin i heart) that i had chosen.

just to let you know that name frustration can go both ways some of us on the other side of the name fence don't drawl our names out to make them sound fancy/whiter/acceptable...and we feel a li'l left out when other people (spesh some indians) call us out on either making up our names (i haven't)/not being proud of our culture (i'm not)/ not being a real indian...

it might have been a lot tougher being a nandini or a nikhil at school...but it is so much cooler than bein' a plain old natasha when you're grown up! plus on the bright side you don't have to deal with talking to someone on the phone and then turning up to a job interview and having people go...wtf?

think my comment got a bit mucked up,

wanted to say i love YoDad! so it's now on record.

I know this post comes under humor, so I hate to get so serious about this but...

A persons name is hugely linked to their identity. A person with a sharply divided identity, lets say, a work identity, a home identity, an artistic identity and a family identity has their human complexity fragmented. Fine, if you decide to compartmentalize yourself. Probably not very healthy but it's your life. Not cool though,when it's foisted upon you, taking away ownership of your name, identity and for a lot of immigrants, the feeling of having control over your own destiny. It can be another step towards subjugation and a display of power.

My girl, Shalaneicey, (her real name) had her name shortened by an employer to just...Neicy.
He said that it was too long to have to keep saying over and over all day. Not because his tongue tripped over it. It's pronounced the same damn way it's spelled.

Being "called out of your name" is a phenomena that's been going on in the Americas since colonialism. Indigenous people were given anglicized names.It's been happening to black folks here since slavery, beginning with the re-naming process during the 'New World' slave trade and then continued unabated, obviously lingering today.

Maya Angelou writes about it below, in her autobiography, 'I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings', chapter 16, when she worked in a white woman's kitchen as a child...

----"The very next day she called me by the wrong name. Miss Glory and I were washing up the lunch dishes when Mrs. Cullinan came to the doorway. "Mary?"

Miss Glory asked "Who?"
Mrs. Cullinan, sagging a little, knew and I knew.
"I want Mary to go down to Mrs. Randall's and take her some soup. She's not been feeling well for a few days."
Miss Glory's face was a wonder to see."You mean Margaret, ma'am. Her name's Margaret."
"That's too long. She's Mary from now on. Heat that soup from last night and put it in the china tureen and, Mary, I want to carry it carefully."

Every person I knew had a hellish horror of being "called out of his name." It was a dangerous practice to call a negro anything that could be loosely construed as insulting because of the centuries of their having been called niggers, jigs, dinges, blackbirds, crows, boots and spooks.

Miss Glory has a fleeting second of feeling sorry for me. Then as she handed me the hot tureen she said, "Don't mind, don't pay that no mind. Sticks and stones may break your bones , but words...You know. I been working for her for twenty years."

She held the back door open for me. "Twenty year. I wasn't that much older than you. My name used to be Hallelujah. That's what Ma named me, but my mistress give me'Glory' and it stuck. I likes it better too."
I was in the little path that ran behind the houses when Miss Glory shouted, "It's shorter too."

For a few seconds it was a tossup over whether to laugh (imagine being named Hallelujah) or cry (imagine letting some white woman rename you for her own convenience). My anger saved me from either outburst.----

"It's more than that - there is no non-Indian language in the world that has any word starting with "Bh". Go ahead - check your white pages. The only names that start with "Bh" are Indian names (and Pakistani derivates of Indian names like Bhutto etc).

Bh is unique only to, you know, Bharat.

M. Nam
------------------
Thats what I used to think, but I have run into some names from Iran that start with Bh. Rare, though.

redr, yes I meant that "Sinead" et al are less Anglo names, hence my use of the phrase "other less Anglo names". Sorry for any ambiguity.

And, khoofia, I agree that the culture you grew up with and exposure definitely has an impact as does, in my view, xenophobia--the more likely that a moniker is viewed as belonging to a member of the mainstream ('Sinead") the more accomodation and willingness to learn will be demonstrated by other members of the group. The story in question dealt with Anglicization of Mexican/Hispanic/Spanish names in the 1950's--I doubt that the same trend regarding names of that particular subset exists to the same extent today.

Again, I think that the U.S./Canada/Britain et al have made a lot of strides in terms of openness to acknowledging, accepting and incorporating new monikers from the less European areas of the planet. I also don't such countries are by any means unique in their initial resistance to "foreign names" (whether due to laziness, xenophobia or a genuine inability to reproduce or hear the sound in question).

My name is Bhasker. I found out waaaay back when I was at University of Cincinnati in sixties that Americans cannot pronounce BH correctly. They would called me bahasker or basker or such silly name. Part of the problem is there is not one word in English dictionary that starts with Bh. There was hound of Baskerville, but not Bhaskerville. My dad always called me by my nickname "Bako". So I stopped these yankees butchering my name any further and adopted "Bob" only in verbal conversation. To this day, I am known as Bob except of course among Desis. I still get mails addressed to me as Bob Tripathi. You know what? Americans are lazy. They don't even seriously try to learn and pronounce foreign name correctly. It's the ugly American attitude I guess !!

There is a whole bunch of sounds that are part of Indian languages, but are not part of english. Essentially all aspirated sounds (chha, jha, tha, dha, ddha, bha, gha, ttha) are missing from english. I have some experience TAing introductory hindi for Americans at my univ's languages dept, and it takes days of practise for them to get these sounds correct. A few initially can't even hear the difference between unaspirated and aspirated sounds( say 'b' and a 'bh'), and have to be trained for that as well. This is not laziness: I worked with an extremely passionate and motivated bunch. But if you have never heard a sound since childhood, its really hard, and IMvHO too much to ask. I have a tacit agreement with the world, where I don't change my name, and don't get bothered no matter how badly anyone mangles my name. Anyway, that's just my position.

Americans often take a midpoint between unaspirated and aspirated for most consonants. eg, when they say party, they say something between partty and partthy. This is because they can't differentiate between the aspirated 'tth' and unaspirated 'tt'. Indians can, and they say 'tt'. And that is where the inherent funniness of the Indian accent comes from.

I know a couple even here in NL tho who were fed up with mispronounciations of Indian names...and gave their second child a classicly Northern European/Scandinavian name. It's a pity really, but I do see their point...

The fact that so many Chinese have an alternate name conveys low self-esteem.

I dont think that anyone can rightly accuse the chinese of having low self-esteem. Quite the contrary actually. Their willingness to adopt anglo first names in the West is their vaunted pragmatism in action.

I purposefully go by a shortened name because I myself got sick and tired of teaches and classmates mispronouncing it, and I still get a little bit irritated by people mispronouncing it.

Non-desis see "Nikhil" and say "Nukheeeel", "Mikhail", "Neekhile", "Nickel" (Nickel!? C'mon!)

So the policy is "Nikhil" around Desis, and "Nick" around non-Desis.

I advise desis not to name their children anything that is shortened to "Nick" :)

The reason being that this word (nick=short for n*gger) is the current racist slur for a colored person in America.

oh, and something else interesting i've noticed...i do have a few (east)asian american friends who have anglo first names, along with a "traditional" non-western name, but they choose to go by the non-western name.

67 · Vyasa said

I advise desis not to name their children anything that is shortened to "Nick" :)

The reason being that this word (nick=short for n*gger) is the current racist slur for a colored person in America.

No, you're thinking of "nig." Nick is a perfectly innocuous name. Although it's pretty ironic that you'd mix the two up in this context...

The funny thing is that a lot of ABDs don't pronounce their own names correctly.
They're so used to hearing the anglicized pronunciation while growing up that they don't care for the 'real' pronunciation.

Having a foreign sounding name is actually quite a liability for most of us average types (Indira Nooyi, Vinod Khosla excluded). I think that my lack of success in garnering leadership responsibility had to do with my insistence with using my desi name at work.

The first 10 minutes of a telecon usually went into spelling out my name. I ended up not being part of the discussion because no one could remember my name among the usual Jims, Jeffs and Lindas.

5 years ago I decided to go by the name Rob and voila things have never been the same again.

The funny thing is that a lot of ABDs don't pronounce names correctly.

I have to admit that my pronunciation is far from perfect.
I also have a "Western" first name, although my situation is pretty unusual...

My sister and I have a very Indian first name and a very Latin last name (that is also my family name). My parents tell me that in the mid-late seventies, it was fashionable for some Christians (read- Catholics) to give their kids Indian first names. It was thought it might help them integrate better with their non- Catholic peers.
Its also a bit confounding because of my spouse who is from a Latin country in Europe.
A lot of people are confused when they meet me, because they incorrectly assume my spouse's last name is similar to mine (or rather I have changed my last name to my spouse). My parents and my extended family however have an Anglo first name and a Latin last name.
I must say however, it has never occured to me to either change my Indian first name or to Anglicize it. It is as pretty as it sounds.

On topic... There was a sketch on Comedy Inc a person named khunthie hernando who insisted on being called by her first name. Everyone obliged eagerly and it had nothing to do with her profession as a lawyer. I think it may have been a scottish name.

66 · Vyasa said

The fact that so many Chinese have an alternate name conveys low self-esteem.

I dont think that anyone can rightly accuse the chinese of having low self-esteem. Quite the contrary actually. Their willingness to adopt anglo first names in the West is their vaunted pragmatism in action.

Rubbish, changing your name to Steve or Tiffany but sounding like a FOB is stupid. There is more respect for short form or variation of your name than having a totally different name that has no historical or cultural relevance.

How pervasive is this among South Asians? I have yet to encounter a non-Christian Desi with a given Anglo name.

Back to difficult names in context: We had a family friend who went by "Mindy" as a nickname -- her full name was Manminder. She decided to legally change it and was on the fence all the way up to the day she appeared before the judge, and he called her "man-minder." That did it for her, and she switched her name permanently.

I responded with "if you call me bob, ill call you *sshole".

Anyway, the toughest name to bear, I think, is Sheetal. People always seem to pronounce it "shit-all".

I think it's fair to expect people to make an effort to pronounce your name correctly, even if that means they will often fall short. I understand that some sounds will just be impossible for English-only speakers, but it's really the lack of effort that bothers me.

I fought it hard for the first few months.
Would rattle out the phonetic alphabet spelling in a flash...Delta! Echo! Victor! etc etc.
Soon I was made Dave, and then my bosses started calling me David.
Finally,at a party,I tried to explain to my colleagues the correct pronunciation of my name,and ended up becoming a Devil-Sheep.
So now I am a law abiding David by day and a diabolical woolly fence jumper by night. Baaaa!!

My name is Bhasker. I found out waaaay back when I was at University of Cincinnati in sixties

That means if it was the late-sixities you would have been in school at the same time with the a talented young man named Greg Cook. If not for some bad luck his name would be in the same company as Unitas, Montana, Marino and Favre.

Suki Dillon: Don't remember any Greg Cook. However, Joe Namath (Broadway Joe)and Vince Lombardi were very popular. Joe Montana,Dan marino and Bret Favre pobably were in Elementary school. In other sports there were Wilt Chamberlain, Lou Alcinder, Cassius Clay, Rod Laver, Pancho Gonzales. Those were the days of Bob Dylan, Janis Joplin, Andy Williams, Simon-Garfunkel, Peter-Paul and Mary, Sinatra. I can go on and on. You get the drift.

Greg Cook was the QB at the University of Cincinnati in the late 60's. He then was drafted by the Bengals and in 1969 had one of the best rookie years a QB ever had. But he had serious arm injury that year and only played 1 more game after that. One of the coach on the Bengals at the time was the late Bill Walsh who was the coach of Joe Montana and Steve Young. Walsh said that if Cook had not had the serious injury to his throwing arm, that he might have been the best qb of all time. His injury had a major impact on the future of the NFL., Bill Walsh had to come up what became the West Coast Offence because the other QB's on the Bengals did not have the talent of Cook.

I am one of those who is crazy adamant that you get my name right. to the point that i won't let go - even when or if i am meeting some fool in a loud club/bar who i know i will never ever encounter again. i am all about spelling it out and re-spelling it and re-spelling it - until the fool has got it straight.

strange enough - i have been accused by my desi born friends that i am mispronouncing my own name. to which i always counter - well, that is how my parents and family pronounce it and they are from india!

to which i encounter: rolling eyes and smug knowing looks amongst the dbis.

4 · delurker said

2 · id888 said

What about the counterpoint? South Asians parents in this country who chose Anglo names for their non-Christian offspring because "it will be good for business". It's common among Chinese and Korean immigrants, but we've resisted in large measure.
I kinda liked the Newsweek cover from the March that was titled "When Barry became Barack".

How pervasive is this among South Asians? I have yet to encounter a non-Christian Desi with a given Anglo name. There have been quite a few with Anglicized knicknames, though.

I know tons of Indo-Americans with first names as "Paul", "Harry", "Monika", "Nisha", "Neena", and "Bobby".

The worst names to be born with are "Harshit", "Hardik", "Anush", and the worst surname is "Butt".

Yo Dad - if you are in Tamil Nadu, you would be called Baskar or if from Kerala - Baskaran. Both are perfectly acceptable variants of Bhaskar or Bhasker.
I have a traditional Anglo first name with an Italian surname - imagine the surprise when people meet me for the first time :) - great source of amusement especially at the Airline counters / restaurants after making online reservations.
And for those who complain about Westerners mangling desi names - the reverse works as well. Desis mangle Western name. Brian ends up as Brain. Gary becomes Jerry.

Note: Tamil does not have 'BH' to the best of my knowledge. Ponniyin selvan can correct me.

Most Chinese in Australia some how cant say "Samir" they end up saying "Samil" while I find most Anglo Aussies can manage Samir.

Some Indian names are pronounced differently in different part of India. The way a Maharashtrian pronounces "Gaurav" is not the same as the way a Marwari does.

Suki Dillon: Now that you have refreshed my memory, yes I remember Greg Cook. He was an undergraduate when I was a Master's candidate.
Melbourne Desi: I am sure folks in Tamilnadu and Kerala can pronounce BH without any effort. Moreover, I am told that Bhaskar or Bhaskaran is usually last name down South, rather than first name, as in my case.
I think Sakshi @ 64 has best explanation why it is difficult to say BH for most non-asians. Indeed it is difficult to train the tongue and lips to make a particular sound.
Thanks

Melbourne Desi: I am sure folks in Tamilnadu and Kerala can pronounce BH without any effort. Moreover, I am told that Bhaskar or Bhaskaran is usually last name down South, rather than first name, as in my case.

Hey! I can attest to that. the 'Bh' phoneme does not exist in tamizh. For that matter, the 'h' sound is itself a challenge. Boston Magesh :-) might attest to that. But if you thought that was bad, try Anbazhagan.

personally i am not attached to names. If compelled to change names to something more latinesque, i'd rather be a manuel or a yiping or a vlad than a chuck. i cant see myself as a chuck. i'd make a great vlad. imagine the wanton impaling.

Huh, I am Tamil, and one of my aunts is named Bharathi. My mother's name is Bhagyalakshmi (spelled without the "h" in the US). There's no trouble pronouncing it at all, because everyone understands the pronounciation is implied rather than explicitly given by a "bh" letter combination in Tamil.

Tamil doesn't have the sound 'bh' in native words, but it has borrowed words (from Sanskrit etc.) with 'bh'. Of course, these may or may not be given the 'bh' pronunciation in Tamil depending on the speaker.