Mispronouncing someones name is now considered “Racist”

As someone with a hard to pronounce " Ethnic" name can I just say how fucking retarded this is?

My parents gave me a name that isn't spelled phonetically. Thats annoying for me but no one else's problem. Shell we counter this by saying its ableist against people with dyslexia or other learning difficulties?

Clickbait.

Do not click on OP's link and give the idiot authors exactly what they want - clicks.

I swear, I thought their name was Hash Brown?

You're not a racist, but only a person who can't read would say KAY-a, when it's spelled KEE-ya.

I remember working at Midway airport and having to page passengers many of whom had Polish last names. I got pretty good after while ,sounding them out

I am white, my name is rare. it never gets pronounced correctly. Can I now describe myself as suffering from racial persecution?

I have a last name where the first vowel is 6 letters in, unless one counts the sometimes Y. No one can pronounce it correctly, not even other people from the country it originates from. If I got my ass out of joint every time someone mispronounced it, I wouldn't get anything done. These people need to toughen the fuck up and spend some time in real life outside of the twitter echosphere.

So are all the people writing "Olivia Colman" as "Olivia Coleman" racist too?

I'm laughing at this because I have what I think is a pretty basic Anglo-Saxon last name. Something as basic as "Wilson" (but not Wilson) and I cannot tell you how frequently people screw it up, even when it is spelled out right in front of them.

My favorite part of the story though is when the (clearly racist) Powerpoint program changed the woman's name.

LOL - this will backfire.

As someone who has an unusual name, I can tell you that people are shy about speaking to you for fear of mispronouncing your name. Also, because it's unusual, people will forget it in casual situations. In turn, these two factors make it much more difficult to meet new people.

Add in the fear of being called a racist - and good luck with that. Everyone from employers to prospective friends and dates will shy away from the problems and hassles.

It's really not a big deal. I stopped giving a fuck about having my "ethnic" name mispronounced when I was still a kid. Of course people are going to have a hard time with a name they never heard before. This is fine. But making an article about such a non issue just makes us look bad.

I worked with an Angie and spell check ALWAYS changed it to Agnes in my emails to her! It became her nickname

One of my friends growing up was named Lloyd, a common enough Welsh name, also quite common in the US. He was pure WASP too.

I cannot tell you how many times people mispronounced his name.

In fact we used to call him "Yoid" because some ridiculous (non-Latina) woman once decided that the double L was pronounced the way it would be in Spanish and called him "Yoid"

And of course, this post calls for this skit, one of Key and Peele's best, if you haven't seen it.

My ethnic name was made more English by my immigrant ancestors neighbors because they had trouble pronouncing it. That doesn't bother me. It is almost always mispronounced nonetheless. Annoying to have to correct people, primarily so they don't subsequently write it on forms incorrectly, but no big deal. My mother's unusual maiden name looks like a more common last name. I have to correct that as well when people need to write it on forms.

God, I hope this isn’t one of the issues Mayor Pete is getting behind or it will sink him.

God, I hope this isn’t one of the issues Senator Kamala is getting behind or it will sink her.

God, I hope this isn’t one of the issues Senator Sandeers is getting behind or it will sink him.

God, I hope this isn’t one of the issues Senator Booker is getting behind or it will sink him.

God, I hope this isn’t one of the issues Senator Klobuchar is getting behind or it will sink her.

God, I hope this isn’t one of the issues Senator Warren is getting behind or it will sink her.

God, I hope this isn’t one of the issues Vice President Biden is getting behind or it will sink him.

God, I hope this isn’t one of the issues Billionaire Bloomberg is getting behind or it will sink him.

My last name is Dell. For some reason, no one ever gets it right. I've been called Dill, Bell, Dahl, and everything in between. Then the Dell computer became popular, and my problem completely ended. I'd tell people, "It's Dell—like the computer."

All went well. Until I ordered a Dell computer. Directly from Dell. And guess who spelled my name wrong. Yep. They did. With only one L.

Fuckers.

On top of that, it was the worst computer I've ever owned, and it made a lifelong believer in Mac out of me.

God, I hope this isn’t one of the issues Billionaire Steyer is getting behind or it will sink him.

God, I hope this isn’t one of the issues Businessman Yang is getting behind or it will sink him.

Camel a will

The problem is English speakers get scared when they see a foreign sounding name.

Instead of just sounding out the letters like we all learned from pre-school, we just blurt out some wacky word.

JUST SOUND IT OUT!

The real test is to give her 10 names from diverse cultures and languages to pronounce correctly in a busy public service job, and make sure she knows that any mispronunciation is, as she herself insists, racist. Somehow, I suspect her hard-line approach will suddenly have a host of mitigations.

I am a BWB (basic white bitch) with a 2 syllable last name that is spelled one letter differently than something you wear. it's pronounced the same as the wearable item. I either get asked EVERY SINGLE TIME how to pronounce it or it is wildly mispronounced. I literally don't care.

Fuck all of you I'm Irish. Keeya my fucking arse! You can take Keeya and shove it.

R28 Foreign sounding names? So that includes everyone who emigrated to the US, by choice or by force, and implies that Native American names roll off the tongue with ease.

[quote]The real test is to give her 10 names from diverse cultures and languages to pronounce correctly in a busy public service job, and make sure she knows that any mispronunciation is, as she herself insists, racist.

LOL - I'd love to see her have a go with Nigerian names:

Abieyuwa

Boluwatife

Ejura ma'jadu ubie

Fatoumata

Gboliwe

Habib

Idara

Jaiyesimi

I still can't pronounce Buttigieg, does this make me homophobic?

hell, I would be impressed if she correctly pronounced library and asked.

OP, it's glaringly obvious that the new tactic for you and other trolls on this board is to post articles from no-name, fly by night, or actual far-right "news" sites with the aim of advancing an anti-left/anti-progressive narrative and conditioning posters to be more sympathetic towards inflammatory conservative attitudes. 'Oooo, look what was posted on this website no one has ever heard of! Now the snowflakes think mispronouncing a name is Racist!?!'

You are not sly.

You are not clever.

You need to die in a grease fire.

I am white and have an "ethnic name" and Latinos and Blacks are the ones who mispronounce my name all the time. I ought to sue them for racial discrimination.

R36 speaks the truth. Mic drop! Take your hideous racist trolling asses back to 4chan

R36 the post OP linked to is from KUOW the NPR station in Seattle. It is not a no-name or right wing site.

The article is also from March. As in over eight months ago.

Actually, OP’s article doesn’t say any such thing.

It’s about people complaining their names are mispronounced. No one calls anyone racist

R41 from the article

[quote]deliberately, wildly misspell my name to show to other people how serious must I be taken if I don't even have what they would consider to be a serious name. It's racist at its core to think that other cultures names are invalid. It's othering and purposefully disrespectful, and it's often used as a weapon against me."

[quote]"The changing of peoples names has a racialized history," said Kohli. "It's grounded in slavery — the renaming during slavery — renaming Americanization schools for Latinx communities and indigenous communities, and so there is a lot of history that's tied to this practice that is directly tied to racism."

[quote]"Interrupting someone to say, 'It's Keya, not Keeya,' isn't me being irritating, it's me putting my foot down against a vehicle of racism, and then in turn, creating an environment in which owning your name is the norm, not the exception," Keya Roy says.

So while they might not explicitly say it is racist, it is clear that is the context of they are saying.

The definition of bigger fish to fry. How’s the weather in St. Petersburg O.P?

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Says it all.

The Explanation given at R42 is particularly insane. What would they say about Caucasian immigrants from European countries such as Germany and Italy who literally had their names Anglecized when they arrived at the port at Ellis Island? Certainly they would have to recognize the overt discrimination occurring in those "re-namings" as not being associated with POC? Gimme a break!

LOL, while there is admittedly much posting of bullshit from unknown right wing sites, R36, OP's post happens to be from the Seattle area NPR radio station KUOW.

That vid was great R14. I was rolling.

Thanks R47-- it's a classic and probably one of the skits that made Key and Peele so popular.

I have a Scottish name. People frequently mispronounce it. In Scotland.

I have a surname with no vowels.

R1 same here and absolutely.

I used to work with a Polish guy whose last name had a couple of extra letters that weren’t pronounced at all. His business card had the correct pronunciation phonetically spelled out on it. There was no other way to guess that was the correct pronunciation of that spelling.

After a while, everybody knew how to say it, and the business cards really helped. But he was mostly called something like “Mr J.”

Conchubhar.

Try that.

A co-worker's name was Tagliaferro. In Italian, TAHL-ya-ferro. Called himself Tolliver.

R53, CON-Chu-bar

R55CruhHOOR

Irish for Conor

I too like many have an ethnic name. I just go by an "Americanized" nickname. Its just easier for everyone. Even the Americanized one is a bit odd, so if I am asked about it I tell them my real name. I always get back "oh, I will just call you by the nickname"

Thanks you OP for postings the news that normal American patriot names are not given to our beautiful youths any more because liberal non-patriots give the children the names that are not good American names like Steve and Douglas and even though it does not say anywheres that this is racism or that not knowing the names is racism you are smart patriot to point out that liberals are making everyone feel racisms even when they do not exist for good patriot Americans. Like us.

r53 Cock-O-Voor

A Starbucks barista getting your name wrong is very different from am elementary school teacher with only 30 students getting your name wrong. If you are a teacher you can damn well figure out how to say Xiaodong or Jacaranda before the first day of school. But failing to makes you a dick, not a racist,

Everyone is offended. Fuck.

I don’t care at all if someone mispronounces my last name, what does bug me is when people don’t make an effort and immediately ask how I pronounce my name. Well, I KNOW how to pronounce it, why don’t YOU give it a try at least? It’s not written in Cyrillic or Arabic.

R61 medical studies have determined that no one has ever died from being offended and the offender's statement was usually correct.

R62 rather than a make a fool of themselves, it's polite to ask how a name is pronounced. I saw a resume where the person's foreign name was written phonetically.

Chrissy Teigen's name is pronounced TY-gen by the family (Norwegian heritage). She later came to prefer the "wrong" pronunciation of TEE-gen. When you have vowels together, the second one takes preference, as in "Eine Kleine Nachtmusik."

My cousin’s name is Saoirse. She doesn’t mind when people mispronounce it, but she gets really pissed when someone calls her ma’am.

R64, it’s ignorant, not polite when you don’t attempt to pronounce a name just because it’s not “Sam Jones”.

[quote] A Starbucks barista getting your name wrong is very different from am elementary school teacher with only 30 students getting your name wrong. If you are a teacher you can damn well figure out how to say Xiaodong or Jacaranda before the first day of school. But failing to makes you a dick, not a racist,

It isn't as simple as that. I tried to do that when I taught in an after school program, at a predominately African-American population. The names are NOT always pronounced the same way, so you have to wait until school starts and ask them how to pronounce their name. I had three girls named Ashanti, none of which were pronounced the same or in the "correct" way. One was ASH-anti, one was As-anty, and one was a-shawn-TAY. So learning the name beforehand didn't help me.

There was a black kid at my son's high school who didn't like his "slave name," which was something like Cedric, so he Africanized it to Mwieu—pronounced OOM-way. (Of course).

It's pronounced "Shuh-KNEE-kwuh"!

R70 Bless you.

We don’t know where we are until we hear our last name pronounced ...

R66 how does she pronounce Saoirse? isn't there an actress with the name who admits she says it incorrectly?

Ser-sha, it rhymes with inertia R73. You’re thinking of Saoirse Ronan.