Like many other browns I know, my name seems to bring out the worst in other people. When I taught elementary school in Brooklyn, an older colleague insisted on calling me “Ms. R.” “I don’t mean to offend,” he explained, “but if I try saying your last name, I know I’ll just sound silly.” Well, now you just sound like an idiot, I thought. A similar encounter occurred during my first week of graduate school, when the Dean approached me and introduced herself. I told her my name, and she asked, “Why couldn’t your parents just name you Molly or Jane?” Yes, I know, Naina Ramajayan…so difficult to pronounce, that even I just call myself ‘The N.’ It’s all pretty ironic, actually; considering that I’m a southie Hindu, my name is about as simple as it gets.
Thankfully, the baggage that comes with my name is fairly harmless, and I’m able to laugh it off. No one has ever looked at my name and suggested that I be targeted for homeland security. Some of my friends from college, however, haven’t been as lucky. When my friend Rahul Shah introduced himself to his co-worker a while ago, she responded, “Like, as in, the Shah of Iran, that Holocaust denier?” (Oh yes, she did.) Another friend felt pressured to start using his middle name at work because his boss joked that his first name, Amit, sounded like ‘Ahmed.’ And so what if does? “Dude,” he explained, “Three of the 9-11 hijackers were named Ahmed.” Amit, Ahmed, Shah, Iran…looks like the code is finally getting cracked.
I used to think these issues concerning names were a burden only for us brown people. But then I learned that Senator Barack Obama of Illinois is in a similar predicament. CNN did a nice story a few weeks ago (you can view the clip here) on the “controversy” surrounding the Senator’s name. Since Obama rhymes with Osama, Barack rhymes with Iraq (and Chirac), and Hussein is his middle name, he’s evidently a newly-discovered threat to the United States. After watching that clip, I felt guilty for thinking my buddy Amit was just being paranoid of his boss all these years. In fact, now I’m even more paranoid than I ever was before. Of rampant stupidity, that is. Aasif Mandvi appeared on the Daily Show on Tuesday night to bring his perspective on Obama-Osama-gate.
My favorite line: Aasif Mandvi? Yikes, I sound like trouble. People, keep your eye on me.
Jokes aside, I have to wonder: if Barack’s name — or any of our names, for that matter — rhymed with McVeigh, Rudolph, or Kaczynski, would any of this even be a topic of discussion?
re: #45: i remember an indian-american once asking me what my “american” name was, and i stared back at her in confusion. isn’t one of the messages america sends to the rest of the world, quite forcefully sometimes, is that it is america because here you as free as you will ever be to be what you want to be? so while anyone should have the freedom to “americanize” (but what does that really mean?) their name, shouldn’t others be given the courtesy of not being made to feel uncomfortable and a misfit because they have a later american (why can’t asian names be or become just as “american” as european ones?) name and not one based on the earlier waves of immigration/colonisation/settlement? wouldn’t truly “native” names be more akin to native american names? i don’t see too many westerners changing their names when they settle in non-western countries, although some will sometimes give any children born in those countries first names based on that culture. even after generations of living in a non-western country, they retain all their western names, dress etc.
Ashi I think you succinctly said how I feel. For me it’s what makes me different and unique and I want people to respect that. I’ve seen western names that are more difficult but people take the time to learn. One of my best friend named her kids Rutvik and Dhruvi, they live in rural PA and every single person in their town I’ve encountered with these kids said it exactly correctly.
And Clueless with all due respect that’s your personal choice and I respect that but there is a host of desis in this country who’ve reached the top, made massive strides and were accepted being who they are with the names they have.
actually, i think of it primarily as a convenience for me! i also have an ethnic and unpronounceable middle name, which is special to me, and only used by my family. if someone asks, i will spend the time and make sure they are able to pronounce it as best as they are able — it’s a real tongue twister and i apprciate that some people can’t get around the sound, but i do make sure to spend the time and correct people when they try. Also, people still get my anglo first name wrong, so i guess it doesn’t matter what your name really is or where it is from.
so a big part of me feels like there is love lost for something that makes you so unique in the need to fit in with everyone else.
i don’t necessarily think that i have lost something that makes me unique by “fitting in.” i still have a unique perspective from the experiences that i have had growing up. since i got married and took my (very white) husband’s last name, i think the dissonance between my name and my appearance makes me even more different. there are 6 thousand Eu-Jin Kim’s out there, i don’t need to be another one.
In South Africa, many S.Asians are 4th or 5th generation and the trend for a few generations back was to give their kids English names. However there has been a huge revival of the brown name and now you find people naming their kids these beautiful S.Asian names. I believe that you should not give up on giving your kids a name/identity that reflects your culture just because some people canÂ’t pronounce it!
I am not even going to get into how my very simple Indian name gets butchered or all the god awful political jokes I hear about my last name.
After reading these comments I wonder if people have any understanding how lucky we are that we live in countries like Canada and the United States. So we have to make some sacrifices like western names among other things. We have so go it here compare to most of the people who live in India.
But that’s just it for me. I don’t think Indians are saturated in the population enough to want to so easily blend in. I have a fairly generic name by Indian standards but in the west it is unique and when people ask me (if if it wasn’t clear) where it’s from I feel a great deal of joy to say Indian.
Not even Patels and Shahs? 😉
And I think, if any society has the best precedent for doing that, it’s this one. America has a history of protean changes to its society, some brought on by virulent means, some more passive. It’s more fulfilling to attempt to alter American culture (since it’s not well defined in the first place)
Then again, most of the previous adaptations involved the defining the social construct “white” (the many times painful integration of more and more European ethnicities), implicit is the exclusion of that which isn’t “white”
As a bengali we have the added humiliation of having daak naam (nicknames) which are generally required to be ridiculus both in sound and meaning so as not to tempt providence. Often they mean things like fatty or stupid, even old geezer (buro). Family members will freely use these names in front of friends and outsiders which only serve to increase the wierdness of the whole name situation. It gives me some insight into why early Europeans anglicized names.
Re: #52 (Whose God is it anyways)
that is appalling. i definately agree you should have a choice, but it seemed like the popular sentiment here was against anglicizing, so i wanted to give my perspective as someone who has wholeheartedly embraced name modifying and changing.
i think as someone else mentioned, eventually asian and desi names will be considered mainstream. i have many chinese-american friends whose families came to the US several hundred years ago in the first wave as indentured laborers, and they were all given paper names. for them, their paper names are an important part of their family history. i think the backlash against names happens to everyone when they first arrive, nothwithstanding your sentiment that america is where you should be free to do whoever you are.
When i was living in Africa, i took the name ‘Famatanding’ — nothing like my american or korean names. my Gambian family picked it, held a kuulio and gave me the tribe name Yabou as well. i went by that name for the entire time i lived overseas. Perhaps i am just the type to drop my name and pick up a new one, but i felt that taking the Yabou clan name was a way of embracing the culture where i was living at the time. I did my best not to be the ignorant foreigner who wanted to hold onto the american values and cultural norms that i was comfortable with. While i still held onto my core american-ness, i did my best, learning the local language, going to koranic school, and fasting for ramadan, even though i had no intention of converting. i did that out of respect for the local culture. i don’t see why doing so in the US is any different, except the greater number of different cultures?
The “I’m lucky to be American and hence should bow down to America and try to fit in with those that migrated here 200 years ago” mentality is something I don’t really get. I still have to work hard for who and what I am like all the other Americans that migrated here before me so I don’t get why the only way to show my gratitude for the opportunity to work hard and have rights that I’ve earned should somehow be “paid back” by me making personal sacrifices about my culture. This whole reason for this country to ever exist was so people could be and do as they please.
I’ve heard this line of argument many times. “You are lucky to be here, if you were in India you’d be XYZ.” Yeah well I am here not in India. I’m also not in Japan or Saudi Arabia or any other place on earth. I had someone say that to me once and my response was if your grandparents didn’t migrate here from Italy you wouldn’t even exist.
JoaT: WORD!
So we are all set, all mutineers are not going to let their kids grow up to be doctors and not naming them Doris/David. 🙂
See, we broke tradition by planning to give our child an Indian first name and American middle name That way, if the child chooses, he/she could go by their own middle name — instead of picking an arbitrary Bobby/Suzy/Pinky/Sunny/etc.
I was specifically looking for a multiethnic name (e.g., like Maya). Fortunately, we found names for her with European and Sanskrit roots, which is great.
At the end of the day, you have a brown kid who does not look like a Judy or a Simone. Even friends who have an Isabella, end up calling her Bella.
Sohwhat I totally respect that and thanx for sharing. I don’t really advocate being a complete rebel for arguments sake because I’m all about creating a comfort zone for yourself. I suppose my comfort zone is just different from others. But the US is not like Africa, it does not have any “core” native culture (not if you don’t count he Indians), the culture here is a mix of all different cultures that migrated here from somewher eelse. In fact this is the only unique place where you bring your own culture and make it American. To me the only thing that spells purely American culture is patriotism. Other than that it’s different everywhere.
“So we have to make some sacrifices like western names among other things. We have so go it here compare to most of the people who live in India.”
in many, many ways yes, you have it so much better. in some ways, no.
i think the thing that strikes me at least is that you feel you have to “sacrifice” a different-sounding name in 21st century United States or Canada. at this stage in these countries’ histories and given their rhetoric on freedoms, you would think the only reason to choose a name would be because you love the sound or meaning of it ( no matter its cultural origin), not to cater to other people’s weaknesses and mental midgetry and laziness or prejudices or whatever the reason is they can’t pronounce a non-anglo name. please don’t misinterpret this as an attack on your personal choices and i hope it doesn’t come across that way. it’s just that i’ve lived in several countries, including many other english-speaking ones, and the only place i have ever encountered or seen such pressure to conform to anglo names is the united states (haven’t lived in canada).
sohwhat: that gambian story is nice. i think the difference is that you seem to be doing it for very different reasons (both in america and gambia) than solely out of a fear-of-being-made-fun-of reaction or solely catering to the prejudices of others. but even if you hadn’t taken a Gambian name, you could still have participated in the local culture and done all the other things you did, that’s my point. anyways, i don’t think this should be turned into a authentic vs. inauthentic (whether it be from an anglo-american or asian-american viewpoint) argument. everyone’s name should be respected, no matter its origin.
I’m definitely a big fan of keeping real desi names alive.
For me it’s about recognizing the poetry of Indian languages, and tapping into the stories and mythology behind the names. My own kid is named after two people named “Puran” — a Punjabi Sikh poet who had a very interesting life, and a reformer who committed his life to helping the condition of India’s disabled. Those connections are more important to me (and it will be to him, when he’s old enough to understand) than whether or not it’s super-easy easy to pronounce. And the same would hold for many difficult Sanskritic and South Indian names.
I really think pronunciation is a minor thing, and will keep getting smaller as the U.S. continues to get more diverse. I think most second/third gen desis are kind of losing sight of that in their rush to fit in.
Perhaps we should do a post dedicated to celebrating beautiful, traditional names, and give the stories behind them.
I’m sorry you took my comments the wrong way JOAT. I never said that you should bow down to America.
Why is it a respectful thing to embrace the Gambian culture but not the American one? Isn’t that a skoshe hypocritical?
I’ve noticed that alot of (white) people in USA nowadays are naming their kids unusual, long or “exotic” names. Especially southerners.
Names that perhaps their grandparents find to be really weird or even hard to pronounce. I don’t see why Indians would have such a hard time with a long or unusual name.
My middle name is Lakshmi and I once heard it pronounced as (I kid you not) “Lunchmeat.” (totally true story) I also once met a caucasian girl whose parents named her Lakshmi. She said it was because they really loved Indian culture. She pronounced it “Laaawk-shmee.” Cringe.
Seems Africa has lost much of it’s core culture(s) also.
Sowhat fasted on Ramadan. As if that’s “african core culture”!!!
I think the same logic Sowhat applied to Africa could be applied to the USA also.
At the same time Whose God Is It makes a good point about USA always screaming “freedom! freedom! freedom!”.
If it’s all about freedom over here, then people should feel free to choose whatever names they want. And I think most people DO feel free to do that. Of course then you also have to feel free to allow for mispronounciations and possible jokes, chuckles, etc.
Amardeep that’s beautiful that your son is named after Bhagat Puran Singh. I just like that he’s named after my favorite Maharashtrian sweet dish, Puran (poli) 🙂
And that is my sentiment as well. We finally are a generation or two rooted in this country to not want to conform anymore.
I’m sorry Clueless if I’m misunderstanding you. I’m just voicing my beliefs, your choice in names deserves respect regardless of what anyone thinks.
People always butcher my name, and I think it is quite easy to pronounce, Bikram. I get Brickham, Birkhum, Beekram. Even desis, automatically change the B into a V and call me Vikram. And now I have to deal with that creepy looking yoga master lol. I thought perhaps western chicks would dig that, oh, like the yoga, but sadly, no 😐
i think this is a little reductionist. while the US is definately a mix of cultures, Africa is also very very diverse. I was adopted into the Mandinka tribe, Yabou clan. There were 10 tribes, and hundreds of clans, all with different cultures, traditions, and values. in some ways, africa is more diverse than the US. i was buying into one clan, not an “african” core native culture. By adopting that Yabou clan name, anywhere i went in TG or Senegal, people knew that my adopted family was from Bambako-Kiang, because that’s where the Yabous live. Here, with an american 1st name and Korean last name (before i changed it) people could also tell that i’m a korean living in the US (or at least the west).
Perhaps, but i definately benefited and appreciate the not-being-made-fun-of by product. and so does that really make me much different?
I have to admit that i totally eyeroll at caucasians who give their kids “exotic” or asian names because they sound pretty. i get to change my name to be more white, but white people shouldn’t be allowed to take names like mine. hurumph.
Why do so many people say America has no culture. Western Culture is american culture.
I’m not so sure anyone including myself is saying that. Seems far fetched. Things that we have embraced as very “American” started out as a tradition brought here from somewhere else.
What is western culture?
The US has a long history of slow cultural integration. I don’t think it’s unfair to judge first gen immigrants for responding to that tradition strategically.
Americans have had to adjust to a whole lot of different factors when it comes to relating to us. They’ve had to contend with new religious beliefs, everything from Islam to the more polytheistic elements of Hinduism. They’ve had to deal with new languages and cultural norms. They’ve had to deal with some Desis who have chosen to resist integration as much as possible. They’ve had to contend with a successful dark-skinned minority (which holds a lot of psychological resonance given the history of this country). In many ways, South Asians represent a very problematic immigrant group, at least from the perspective of “national culture”-oriented culture critics. And yet the process has been much smoother than it could be.
Despite all the overheated rhetoric in this country, we have not seen ghettoization of immigrant minorities in the same scale as Europe. In fact, even for traditionally excluded minorities, integration is increasing here. But this integration is happening along a lot of different pathways, and it’s natural that individual immigrants (or families) would experience the process of integration differently.
My parents chose to give their kids Anglicized names. That’s true. They also chose to raise money to build a Hindu temple smack dab in the middle of the Bible Belt. They chose to send my sisters to religious and language classes (I wasn’t sent because the community where we were living when I was young was not well-developed). My parents vote in every election and volunteer for many school related events, but they also tend to avoid volunteering for community boards, political organizing, or the like because they still don’t think they’d be accepted. Despite the choice to give Anglicized names, my parents still have a lot of traditionally Desi ideas, values, and traditions. So my family is integrating, but it’s doing so at its own pace.
Individuals are too complicated to make distinctions about who is or is not compromising their values in order to integrage. Is a “Sriram” that converts to Southern Baptism more of a sell-out than a “Karen” who is Hindu or Sufi? I know some aunties who would think that a nice Desi girl who came to the US and worked in the fashion industry instead of proceeding with Operation Marry A Citizen-Doctor was “selling out”. Who would be a bigger sell-out: a Desi woman named Janet marrying a white man or marrying another Desi with an Anglo name?
My point is that people are way too complicated for these judgments. The fact that someone has an Anglo name (or has chosen to convert their name into a more Anglo-friendly equivalent), doesn’t mean that they’ve turned their back on the Desh.
That’s so disturbing – especially when I hear about Sikh guys cutting their hair as adults because they think they can’t get a job – yet there are so many examples of Sikh men with turbans in great positions. Same concept as saying that you can’t get a job because of your name. This is North America we’re talking about, right?
At the end of the day, if an employer is a racist, you probably won’t get the job because you’re brown – regardless of whether your name is Sheetal or Susan.
I second that Amardeep, we should have a post that glorifies how beautiful S.Asian name are. And if people are at peace with a name like Uma(Thurman), hello, they will learn to appreciate the beauty of other brown names.
On a side note, I was eating breakfast this morning and caught a snipet on the telly, Liz Hurley is going to have two weddings, an english one in London and an Indian one in India. Bridezilla has demanded that all the ladies wear pink saries!
Naina – welcome! 🙂
Here’s my take – if I go out of my way to correctly pronounce your name, take a second out of your day to correctly pronounce mine. Maybe it’s different living in the bay, but for every “ethnic” name I learn (be it in Spanish, Chinese, Polish, Vietnamese, Tagalog), I think it’s only fair to ask the same. In my opinion it’s a matter of respect. I think it’s easy for people to throw up their hands and say “oh it’s too hard to pronounce.” I’m more willing to respect someone if they try.
I think the worst part of all the name confusion is exactly what Naina described; people assume “foreign” sounding names/faces are terrorists or whatever the racist flavor of the day is. And the whole Barack Hussein Obama/Osama stuff is awful. It honestly made my heart sink when I saw this on the news, and as funny as the bit was on the Daily Show, at the end of the day this is totally a political tactic and is hugely offensive. It’s like someone reminding everyone that people of color in the United States should expect to take a backseat in political representation, once again, or face humiliation.
Amardeep, your son’s name is beautiful 🙂 Maybe I’m partial, though, because my brother’s name is Sampurn.
I really agree with Jane here in that I think it’s misleading to think that “American culture” is white Anglo/Saxon culture, or some weird variation thereof. The US is diverse, and I think it’s important for people to work together to live in a diverse community. Also, what is up with this whole discussion of “African culture”? This is offensive on such a huge level; Africa is a huge continent, it is not some homogenous place where “Africans” live. Each African country also has a huge level of diversity, so I don’t think it’s useful to be so reductionist in the terminology.
As someone with a “white” name (French), I’m always a bit torn. I mean, a good number of people mispronounce my name, whether they are desi or white. Desis because they’re expecting something desi-sounding, and whites because they’re expecting something desi-sounding 🙂 The worst though, is constantly having to explain that your name was not your parents attempt to assimilate. Both my siblings have very “traditional” names, and yet I am the person in the family singled out in public as the one with the “white-washed” or “sell-out” name. It cuts both ways, sometimes. If I had kids, I would totally want them to have names that meant something, both to their parents and to their own heritages.
So true. That’s why I love my name so much. My middle name has a beutiful mythology attached to it. And my first name (which is rather ethnically “ambiguous”) has it’s own totally different story.
That would be awesome! Maybe you could add a pronunciation guide too for those of us that need a little help with some names.
Are the people who are against anglicizing names also opposed to Christian Indians in India who Hindu-ize their names? Names like Roshni Mary George and Anoop Antony Philip are not uncommon in Kerala.
Also, research shows that having a distinctly minority name puts a child at a disadvantage. There are many ways to resist the forces of racsim and idiocy but do you really want to fight that battle with your baby’s name?
Here’s the research:
Forget cultural differences. Why donÂ’t parents simply say the whole name aloud before slapping it on their defenseless kids? HavenÂ’t they heard of middle school? I know a Dick Healing. DonÂ’t even know where to begin w/ Moonbeams and Apples. These kids should be allowed to rename their parents. As in Potato MartinÂ’s new album sucks or Starring Banana Paltrow. And itÂ’s not just the famous ones doing it either. Had a friend named Apekshit, (means expected in Marathi). Oh the possibilities.
Sonia Kaur why do sikh’s have to have beards and turbans. I guess since I never did, that does not make me a real sikh.
Amardeep:”Those connections are more important to me (and it will be to him, when he’s old enough to understand) than whether or not it’s super-easy easy to pronounce”
This sounds like Gogol Ganguli’s father in “The Namesake” 🙂
Sonia – I totally agree with you. That comment bothered me too. It’s one thing if you had a name like Saddam and lived in the Bible Belt. However, if you’re living in diverse or metropolitan areas, there shouldn’t be a problem.
I would be interested to know what people think of call center staff in India who adopt Christian pseudonyms to make their jobs easier. Is that selling out? What about people who use a pseudonym when ordering delivery food so you don’t have to spell out your name? Is using a pseudonym any different than simply having an Anglicized name?
Hey guys,
Interesting comments so far. I’m glad to see this post resonated with people. But I just wanted to clarify a few things, b/c there seems to be some confusion about the intentions behind this post.
I don’t really have a problem when people mispronounce my name. I just gently correct them. The problem for me is when people don’t even TRY to pronounce it, as in the case of my former colleague, or the Dean of my grad school, who I felt was essentially saying, “Why can’t you just conform to make things easier for me?”
I was also trying to illustrate how people often antagonize difference. Barack Obama is currently facing some heat because his name is different, and therefore, he must be a threat. Similarly, my friends Rahul and Amit have been viewed with suspicion because they have names that sound “Islamic.”
I think it’s interesting how Terrible assumed that I was attacking white people in this post (although s/he might have said this in sarcasm, I couldn’t tell). Just so you know, my former colleague that I mentioned was black, and Rahul’s co-worker is Latina. So it’s not just an issue of dealing with white people’s expectations of assimilation, it also seems that other people of color can feel just as threatened by difference.
What wrong with intergration. You people who live in the states are lucky you don’t have it like here in canada.
Here in Canada immigrant ghetto’s are getting worse and worse. Just go to the Vancouver area where the punjabi community has become isolated from the rest of community.
Hmm, I take it you’re just on this thread to annoy people – in every one of your posts you’ve taken something someone has written and put your own spin on it and reworded it. So I’ll refrain from answering since you don’t seem to be able to understand what people write very cleary. Let me know if you have a question on one of my comments that actually makes sense.
I think the worst part of all the name confusion is exactly what Naina described; people ( read racist White people ) assume “foreign” sounding names/faces are terrorists or whatever the racist flavor of the day is. – Camille ( The Indian Toqueville )
America must be such a dreadful place to live for all of us with foreign sounding names. Or is it only in Camille’s victim imagination?
Dude, way to totally editorialize, hyperbolize, and misrepresent my comment. Congratulations. I never said America was an awful place to live, but it’s naive to think it’s all daisies and butterflies. We, as a country, have a lot of growing to do, still.
Why do people who convert to religon change there names. Look at people who convert to Islam or even all those white converts to sikhism. There does not seem to be much outrage.
Sonia, yes, I think you should just ignore “Clueless.” The best I can say about him is, his alias seems to be well-chosen.
Ashi (#87), hm, you might have a point! If my kid ends up hating his name and decides he prefers some nickname I will have to remember to go along & not be the tedious conservative dad.
(Still, the response to this thread shows that Lahiri was onto something in putting naming/nicknaming issues at the center of her novel)
Yes America has it faults, but it still is alot better place to live then most other places in the world. I just wish people who complain about America could tell us where this perfect place to live.
I’ve got a beef (so to speak) with all of y’all. What’s with all the hating on butchers?
Your South Indian friends have been butchered? You’re commenting on the wrong thread, mate.
Well, they are skilled sausagemakers, the Dutch. Is your name a cow?
Watch it! Butchers constantly butcher, it’s what they do. Why does butcher have to mean mangle?
Maybe they’ve got a bone to pick with foreigners.
No one has to suffer if the butcher uses a sharp cleaver.
Non-veg Indian?
Let me guess: halal.
Butcher, butcher, butcher, ffs. A name is not a piece of meat, so if we could find another metaphor, that would be great.
Don’t hate, marinate.
“What wrong with intergration. You people who live in the states are lucky you don’t have it like here in canada.”
what does anglicizing/not anglicizing one’s name have to do with integration? the two are not mutually exclusive, you can have a non-anglo name and be successfully integrated.
“I would be interested to know what people think of call center staff in India who adopt Christian pseudonyms to make their jobs easier.”
i think at this point it’s pointless. everyone knows or everyone assumes (even if incorrectly sometimes) that anyone they speak to at the other end of the line is in india these days. also, many of those employees are also young europeans working in indian call centers. if they want to call themselves pat or pam or joe, that’s up to them, but pointless at this stage. what annoys me is when i get someone i know is an indian call center worker affecting an american accent who then proceeds to pretend that they can’t pronounce my indian name. they make me spell it out and then purposely mangle it a couple of times for effect to make the ridiculous charade seem real. i can understand pretending with non-indians who are threatened by different names etc., but i guess there must be a company rule that you have to pretend with everyone.
“Just so you know, my former colleague that I mentioned was black, and Rahul’s co-worker is Latina. So it’s not just an issue of dealing with white people’s expectations of assimilation, it also seems that other people of color can feel just as threatened by difference.”
i think that’s a very important point. i have a friend with a short indian first name. while ordering at a fast food place once they had to give their name. the lady (black) behind the counter sniggered to another woman about what a weird name it was. yet her name tag had one of those long (non traditionally christian, non-anglo) manufactured names that even other blacks poke fun at.
That’s classic!
I have a friend who teaches “accent neutralization” courses at those call centers.
Wow, this video goes so well with this discussion.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bU70qAfQAo8&NR
Soniaji, Whats wrong with punjabi names ending in ‘jeet’? 🙁
Being Sikh actually helps get you a better position. Employers think you are intelligent as all desis are and they hire and compensate better. some stereotypes have advantages and we should use them accordingly.
and kobayashi,
Don’t hate, participate.