Opening an email with a press release inside, I’m immediately irked by the first line. It reads: ‘Dear Sharon’. It’s my name, I guess. Just spelt incorrectly. ‘Sharan’ means shelter in Sanskrit, but ‘Sharon’ means fertile land in Hebrew. Yet these two different names seem to be interchangeable in autocorrect. The spelling isn’t so different – Sharon is the anglicised version of an Indian spelling after all – and I’m certain many people wouldn’t see it as a big deal, but it makes me feel strange. It’s as if I look down at my hands on my keyboard and watch the skin transform to white with no hyperpigmentation or leftover specks of henna from that wedding a month ago. The thing is, our names matter. They are connected to our personalities and individuality. No one deserves to have theirs written or pronounced wrongly.
In 2021, I was interviewing my dad for my book Burning My Roti, and I asked him about my name. ‘I chose it’, he said matter of factly. But when I asked why he chose my white-sounding name, he sighed. ‘Ever since I got to England, no one could say Kuldip. They butchered it,’ he explained. ‘I remember at an old job, someone just said KC and it stuck – for three whole years, that was my name. I thought Sharan would be easier – no one can get that wrong.’ He told me about the discrimination he had faced after immigrating in the 70s. About someone screaming at him in a pub because he wanted to play darts in the ‘white area’. Or when he started a job in a kitchen and the boss told him he was only good for mopping up people’s spills, and wasn’t allowed to touch anything else. It was exhausting for him. But to learn that, even when he eventually started to get respect in jobs and public spaces, he was still facing awkwardness with his name, made me deeply sad. So, when he had me he made a decision – her name will be easy for them to say. My mum, however, had other ideas. ‘I wanted to name you Shweta’, she said calmly and smiling, ‘but your dad, you know him, you can’t convince him otherwise when he wants something.’ I think of the name Shweta and attach it to my face. It suits me, I think. Like my ethnic jewellery, clothing and food – the name becomes something I can wear with pride. But I’m left with Sharan. Again, it’s fine. A fine name. It’s just…why did my dad have to choose a less ethnic name for me based on his racial trauma, when English people could merely have asked how to pronounce Kuldip?
This isn’t an unusual adjustment for people of colour though. Code-switching – which is when someone switches between languages in conversation or adjusts their language, syntax, grammar and appearance to fit into another culture – as it’s known, is especially common for underrepresented groups, particularly when it comes to names. It’s even been openly discussed in pop-culture in recent years. In 2018 Boots Riley’s film Sorry To Bother You, focuses on a character played by LaKeith Stanfield who gets a job at a telemarketing agency, and finds success by adjusting his voice to ‘sound white’. I went to watch this film with my dad and he laughed in the way only a dad can – by slapping his knee and wiping a tear – because he saw his story of accepting ‘KC’ as his name in the main character. That same year while on Seth Meyers, actress Uzoamaka Aduba told a story of her mum defending her name. She said: ‘If they can learn to say Tchaikovsky and Michelangelo and Dostoyevsky, they can learn to say Uzoamaka.’ Then, in 2019, American comedian Hasan Minhaj, went on The Ellen DeGeneres Show and corrected her pronunciation of his name: ‘If you can pronounce Ansel Elgort, you can pronounce Hasan Minhaj.’ When Ellen asks what he does when ordering coffee, he quips: ‘At Starbucks, I go by Timothée Chalamet.’
A 2023 poll, conducted by Race Equality Matters, 73% of respondents experienced mispronunciation of their name – which in turn made them feel ‘not valued or important’, ‘disrespected’ and ‘that they didn’t belong’. I can understand that – I’ve experienced a sort of dissociation from conversations, when my name isn’t pronounced right. I now correct people – I feel that a moment of embarrassment can be easily endured, in order to avoid a lifetime of alienation. My own name continues to go through some variants. In emails, I get the obvious Sharon – fine. But I also get Sharon Diwali – not fine. During handshakes, I’ve had everything from Sharaan and Shareen to Sharana, Samreen and Shavan because the expectation when people finally meet me is that it must be more ethnic sounding than it looks.
I understand the struggle to a point – I once accidentally signed off my own email as ‘Satan’ – and a lot of the time it is autocorrect, smart email or anxiety that are to blame. But names need to be recognised and our individuality needs to be noted – we are not the same as everyone else. It’s what makes us human. I wish people asked my dad how to pronounce his name, so he didn’t feel awkward about it. I wish he let my mum name me. I wish my name was Shweta. Proudly Indian and easily mispronounced. Instead of awkwardly white, with panicked wide-eyed adaptations during introductions.
Do you have a story you’d like to share? Get in touch by emailing jess.austin@metro.co.uk. Share your views in the comments below.
