Wall Street Journal columnist Callum Borchers recently wrote about people who originally went by easy-for-English-speakers nicknames, but are now asking their co-workers to step up and call them by their actual names. Callers facing the dilemma of name-splaining vs going by another name call in and share their stories.
Brian Lehrer: To end the show today, another two-part call-in for people of different generations. Today it's for those of you who have adopted an Americanized nickname to assimilate more easily into school or the workplace or wherever, or if you have not done that, and if that's different by age. Like yesterday on yesterday's topic, we'll open the phones for younger callers first, let's say anyone 40 or younger. We'll get to older callers in a few minutes.
If you're 40 or younger and have a name that's difficult for many Americans to say, have you adopted an Americanized nickname to assimilate more easily into school or the workplace, or wherever? Tell us why or tell us if you have not done that and why not? 212-433-WNYC is our phone number. 212-433-9692. Like yesterday on a different topic, this will be two back-to-back 10-minute call-ins, first for younger listeners, then for older listeners.
Again, if you're 40 or younger and have a name that's difficult for many Americans to say, have you adopted an Americanized nickname to assimilate more easily into school or the workplace or wherever and tell us why you did it or tell us why if you have not done that. 212-433-WNYC. You can also say if you did take an Americanized nickname and then change back. In fact, the inspiration for this call-in is a Wall Street Journal article out last week, maybe you saw it, by Callum Borchers, the Irish name Callum, in which he declares that he used to shorten it to Cal for everyone's convenience, but now decided he won't do that anymore.
He's proudly using his full first name Callum even though it's unfamiliar to many people, and he keeps having to correct the pronunciation. Listeners 40 or under for this first call-in, does that sound like you? 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. He also tells the story in that article of the TV host who used to go by Sal Masekela and recently started using his real first name, Selema. If you watched him as Sal Masekela, you see him now as Selema Masekela. What about you, listeners, under 40? 212-433-WNYC. Have you gone through anything like that? We'll take older callers on the same question in a few minutes.
Our curiosity in generational terms is do you think that you're grappling with your real versus Americanized nickname in a different way than your parents' generation or then older generations? Is assimilation becoming more of a dirty word, shall we say, or is pride becoming more acceptable, and you're more willing to suffer the inconvenience of using your real full name than maybe another generation has been? We'll start with a caller in Brooklyn who if I saw your name in print without a pronouncer, K-E-I-S-H-A, I would say Keisha, but that would be wrong, wouldn't it?
Keisha: It would be wrong. My name is Keisha.
Brian Lehrer: How do you deal with it in real life?
Keisha: I go by KKY and people usually tell me, "That's short for something." I tell them, "You know what? It's just Keisha." It's because they see it and they say Keisha, and then before they can call me something that's not my name and before I offend them and make them feel bad for not pronouncing it right countless times, I just go by Kky.
Brian Lehrer: You just go by Kky. Have you ever thought of doing the opposite and living in that slight discomfort so that people say your real name?
Keisha: Sometimes I do. I'm a teacher at a charter school in Brooklyn and everyone there is African American and people of color, and they're like, "No, just go by Keisha. Live and be authentic. It's Keisha. We won't forget it. We won't mispronounce it," and so I am learning to be a little more comfortable with my name. My parents didn't know English when they saw the name Keisha so they pronounced it Keisha. That's how my name came about.
Brian Lehrer: Thank you so much for your call. Janya who a lot of people might call Janya in Manhattan, you're on WNYC. Did I get that duality right?
Janya: Yes. You got the pronunciation right. For the first 25 years, most of my friends and teachers called me Janya, but my name is Janya. At my 25th birthday, one of my best friends who knew the correct pronunciation forced me to come out and tell everyone how to correctly pronounce it, and I've been doing that ever since. Never went by an Americanized name, but I went by a mispronounced name for a long time.
Brian Lehrer: It's J-A-N-Y-A. Is that correct?
Janya: Yes, but it's pronounced Janya. My father-in-law says to tell people it's like Funya because I'm so fun.
[chuckles]
Brian Lehrer: Is there a deeper thought to this for you? How much do you want to assimilate to the extent that that pronunciation represents some kind of assimilation versus hold on to something of whatever your cultural heritage is that's different and not allow it to get lost?
Janya: I'm Indian and it's interesting, this isn't a very common Indian name at all. It's not a name a lot of people have come across be it Indian people or others, so I get mispronunciations across the board. I think growing up in kindergarten, it's hard for a five-year-old to tell their teacher how to pronounce their name correctly, so I just went with it for a long time. Now everyone is more accepting of different cultures, of being corrected, of everything. There's just a lot more openness so it's become a lot easier to just stand up and say what my name is.
Brian Lehrer: Janya, thank you very much. Dan in Brooklyn, you're on WNYC. Hi, Dan.
Dan: Oh, hi. Hi, Brian. How are you?
Brian Lehrer: Good. Is Dan your real name?
Dan: Yes. My real name is [unintelligible 00:07:07], so Chinese. My nickname, as you know, is Dan. The reason Dan was given is that it's very difficult to pronounce. If I didn't have assimilated name, I would get a lot more bullying than I got growing up, and I did not grow up in an Asian or Chinese community. It's just easier overall for life to have assimilated name. I also wanted to add actually that I lived in China in my later years for five years. All of the Chinese people there that dealt with the Westerners always took on a Western name as well. That's an interesting little side fact, I think.
Brian Lehrer: Do you think that it's changing at all from generation to generation? Now you're still going by Dan. You have not dug in on your actual given name. One classic immigrant family story is the parents get dismayed over how American and rejecting of old country traditions the kids get as they come of age here.
Maybe now we're seeing the other direction be very prominent, the younger generation asserting their identities more than the parents who wanted to blend in to the extent that they could, and today's generations want to work against the erasure of a heritage. Is that in your brain at all or do you experience just dissonance within yourself going by Dan as opposed to your given name along those lines?
Dan: I think it might be true. It depends on where you live and you grew up in the States. If you grew up in a big city like New York City, I think it's more acceptable as a younger Chinese person to use her given name or their ethnic name, Chinese name, but if you grew up in a more rural area of the States, I think it's probably wiser to have a westernized nickname. It just makes life easier. It's not a stigma for the Chinese culture to have that. We assimilate everywhere. If we're in France, I'll have my name like Francois or Pierre. If I'm in Italy, I'm Fabio.
Brian Lehrer: [chuckles] I hear you.
Dan: I think it's something like that. I'm not sure.
Brian Lehrer: Dan, thank you. I got you. Thank you very much for your call. I appreciate it. All right. That's the first 10-minute call-in for people 40 and under on this question. Now the same question for callers over 40, if you have a name that's difficult for many Americans to say, have you adopted an Americanized nickname to assimilate more easily into school or the workplace or wherever?
Tell us why or why not. You can also say if you did take an Americanized name and then changed back like The Wall Street Journal writer, Callum Borchers, who I mentioned, or the TV host Sal Masekela. Yes, those of you who know the musician Hugh Masekela, Sal, who now is going by Selema, his real name, is the son of Hugh Masekela. Do you think it's different by generation? Do you think your children's generation is more anti-assimilation than you were? That's sort of the underlying question here. Candy in Manhattan, you're on WNYC. Hi, Candy.
Candy: Hi. Thanks for taking my call. Long-time listener, first-time caller.
Brian Lehrer: That's right.
Candy: Thank you. I was named after my Italian grandmother who's name was Carmela, but my parents decided they needed to Americanize it so they made it Carmel Ann, which is hardly a typical American name. When I was about five years old, we moved. I moved into a new neighborhood and almost immediately, one of the mothers on the block in New Jersey nicknamed me Candy because the children couldn't say Carmel Ann. It was too many syllables. I've been Candy for the past 70 years. About six years ago, I assumed it more formally as a stage name. Prior to that, I just used it everywhere but maintained Carmel Ann on my checking account, et cetera.
Brian Lehrer: Do you miss your given name or ever feel like, "Oh, I should just make people say my real name because it's my real name."?
Candy: No, I don't, because my parents started calling me Candy almost immediately as well. I really grew up with it. I use it comfortably. I sign checks formally. No, I don't miss it. I've been Candy for too long.
Brian Lehrer: Thank you very much. Maggie in Westchester, you're on WNYC. Hi, Maggie.
Maggie: Good morning. Thank you so much for taking my call. I'm actually going to be late for my meeting, but this is so interesting to me. I have three generational stories to tell you. Myself, my given name is Mozhgan, which is a Persian name. People that knew me when I was young, everybody called me Mozhgan. When I started working, somebody could not pronounce Mozhgan, so they called me Magnolia. Maggie is short for Magnolia. [chuckles] That's how I came across Maggie. I'm 59 years old. Professionally, I'm known by Maggie. By the name they call me, I know how long I've known someone. My mother, when she-- Yes?
Brian Lehrer: No. Go ahead. Your mother what?
Maggie: My mother who's 80 years old, when she became an American citizen, she didn't take an American nickname, but she takes the name Terry which is very easy to pronounce because that's the name that everybody calls her all her life. She actually changed her name to an easier version of her name.
Brian Lehrer: Yes.
Maggie: When we had children--
Brian Lehrer: When you had children, yes, go ahead. Keep going down the generation.
Maggie: Yes. When we had children, we decided that we definitely wanted to have a name that's easy to pronounce. It's a Persian name, but it's easy to pronounce. We named our daughter Yasmin. Forever, everybody calls her Jasmin so we-
Brian Lehrer: [chuckling]
Maggie: -messed up over there too. [laughs]
Brian Lehrer: Does it ever make you angry or anything like something about your Persian heritage is getting lost in all this renaming-
Maggie: No.
Brian Lehrer: -for the convenience of others?
Maggie: I definitely make sure everybody knows I'm Persian. It's interesting when I get mails addressed to Margaret and I start laughing [laughs] because they think Maggie is short for Margaret.
Brian Lehrer: Right.
Maggie: Yes.
Brian Lehrer: I hear you. Maggie, thank you so much. Akeyo in Connecticut, you're on WNYC. Hello, Akeyo, and did I say that right?
Akeyo: You did. That's the way I pronounce it. As I mentioned to you screener, I grew up in Boston in the '70s. At that point, going to school there not amongst other Japanese people, I changed the pronunciation of my name to accommodate everybody around me.
Brian Lehrer: I see you told our screener you're 54. As you look at people in the next generation down from you now, do you think there's more of an insistence in general in being called by your real name? That was the title of The Wall Street Journal article that inspired this call, Call Me By My Real Name, and that something is changing about people's relationship to assimilation.
Akeyo: I think that's probably true. I'm not from that generation so it's hard for me to say exactly, but I would think that it has more to do with than just names but just identity in general. I think assimilation, it wasn't just about the name when I was growing up. It was kind of across-the-board assimilation. Especially as an Asian, you're always questioned in the way you speak English and so that becomes a pretty big priority growing up, certainly back then.
Brian Lehrer: Thank you very much. I appreciate it a lot. Abhijit in Manhattan, you're on WNYC. Did I say your name right?
Abhijit: Perfect. You said it right. Can you hear me?
Brian Lehrer: I can hear you, yes.
Abhijit: Yes. A big fan of your show, Brian. My name is a very common name in the Indian subcontinent. I come from India. When I moved due to work during the 2009 financial crisis, I moved to Northern Minnesota, this was the first time they heard that name there. They were like, "Abi what? They just could not say it. I just said, "Hey, call me AJ," and that went well. Then that AJ name got stuck to me in my next workplace and then I started hating it. I was like, "That's not my name. Why are people calling me AJ?" I switched back to Abhijit. I now insist on calling me Abhijit, but then the name gets butchered many times.
Brian Lehrer: You're constantly correcting people?
Abhijit: Not necessarily. I just say whatever, what's in a name? Right?
Brian Lehrer: Yes.
Abhijit: I gave up and I said, "Yes, sure." I also started laughing about it.
Brian Lehrer: Why did it make you angry? Good. It sounds like you're laughing about it, but you said it made you angry.
Abhijit: Yes. At some point, it became AJ this, AJ that. I just said, "My friends don't call me that. I should go back to my [chuckles] AJ."
Brian Lehrer: Abhijit, thank you.
Abhijit: That's probably why.
Brian Lehrer: Thank you very much. All right. Louis in Perth Amboy is going to get our last 30 seconds on this. Louis, you're on WNYC. Hello. Did I say your name right?
Louis: I was born in Perth Amboy in New Jersey in the '60s and I had an older brother born here as well. We're Cuban American. He used to introduce me as Louis, which is my real name. Everybody understood Louis, so my Anglo neighbors just gave me the nickname Louis and I've been Louis ever since.
Brian Lehrer: How do you feel about that?
Louis: I like being called Louis. Some Anglos try to call me Louis and I will always tell them, "If you're going to speak to me in Spanish, go ahead and call me Louis. Otherwise, let's stick to Louis."
Brian Lehrer: Oh. You really adopted it. All right. Thanks for all your calls on your names. Thank you.
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