In the immortal words of William Shakespeare, “What's in a name? That which we call a rose/By any other name would smell as sweet.” He used this of course in the context of Romeo and Juliet to prove that their family names meant nothing, and their love transcended such artificial convictions. But, here’s where I have to disagree with dear old Billy. Names do mean something, and they hold a very real significance both culturally and personally.
If you think about it, names are something truly amazing. In their most basic sense, they’re just an arbitrary combination of syllables that we are conditioned to respond to. But in a much more real sense, they hold so much history and represent the generations that we have descended from. The seemingly endless variety of names has withstood the test of time, and in their meanings is reflected the struggle and resilience of human history. I’ve always been a little bit embarrassed about my name. Don’t get me wrong, I love my name, but I’ve always found myself apologizing for it. When someone mispronounced my name, I would simply let them because I didn’t want to be rude. In hindsight, of course that behavior strikes me as silly, and I should have demanded that they pronounced my name correctly. My name is not Sriya or Shreya or Sarayah or even Sarah (I don’t even know how you’d come to that conclusion from looking at my name.) My name is Sreya, and I will not apologize for your inability to pronounce it.
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I used to feel arrogant when I told people what my name meant. When I told them it meant “best and beautiful,” I would always follow it up with a joke like “kinda high standards to live up to, haha!” But you know what? I am the best. And I am beautiful. And I refuse to water down my own self-worth in order to please others. My name is wonderful and pure and deserves to be treated as such.
First names are one thing, however. Last names are a whole different story. If I had a nickel for every time someone hesitated before trying to pronounce my name, I’d be rolling in dough right now. I die a little bit inside every time I think of the awkward roll calls in school, and don’t even get me started on the days we had substitute teachers. Every time someone asked me for my last name, I would wince and self-deprecatingly announce that, “it’s kinda long.”
I remember in the second grade, I had a teacher pronounce my last name as “Submarine.” Something about that didn’t sit right with me, but I laughed it off and didn’t cause a scene. Everyone thought it was funny, and I wanted to be in on the joke. At the time I didn’t realize that the only reason I didn’t understand the joke was because I was the joke. In hindsight, I was wrong for allowing people to get away with making jokes out of my name or mispronouncing it, or not saying it all together. But I will not allow that to happen anymore, because my name is too important to me to allow it to be disrespected.
My anger at past injustices, however, doesn’t mean that I will be angry at you if you mispronounce my name once or twice. Of course, there are going to be some names that you’re unfamiliar with, and it might take you a while to say them correctly. There are names that I might mispronounce on the first try, and I’m not blameless in that either. It's important to own up to your shortcomings and work to be better. But if you refuse to even try on account of my name looking too “foreign” or “exotic”, then you are the problem.
The names of people of color are already bastardized and disrespected on a daily basis because our society only prefers Western-sounding or derived names. We live with the constant scorn of not only our names, but also of our identities and our beliefs. It’s important that we not remain complacent anymore in the reclamation of our identities. We need to call out the injustices that we encounter in order to shape our society for the better.
We are important, our names are important, and you’d do well to start treating us as such.
