What's In a Name?

When I was younger, I wanted my name to be Veronica or Vivian. My mother had the name Brittany picked out before I was even thought of so I would always have the name Brittany, though. My last name is Fholer, pronounced like Kohler but with an F. The number of teachers and just people in general who have mispronounced it, either when trying to read it or after hearing me say it, is too many to count. If I had a dollar for every time my last name was mispronounced, I might be able to pay for textbooks or a portion of my tuition and fees here at UNT.

 In one of our classes, someone brought up the guy named Jose who dropped the "S" from his name on job applications. His last name is Zamora. Jose Zamora couldn't get a response back but Joe Zamora could. The power that a first name has. Someone mentioned that they knew someone who named their daughter a certain name because she wanted her to be employable.

I can't fathom ever planning my child's name around that. I thought I understood having a hard to pronounce name and the repercussions of that. I realize though that this is nothing compared to what other people have to go through.

The whole topic of names, and specifically names in the African-American community, made me think of Quvenzhane Wallis, from Southern Beasts in the Wild and Annie, and Uzo Aduba, from Orange is the New Black. 

Quvenzhane is pronounced Kwuh-Venn-Zhuh-Nay. She's currently 11 years old but when she came into the spotlight, she was around 8 or 9. The first part of her name, Quven, is a mix of her parents' names- Qulyndreia and Venjie, while, "zhane" is Swahili for "fairy". The hate and animosity she's received because of her name, and the number of adults who have made fun of her name, is alarming. She isn't the only child in the U.S., or the world, with a unique name.

Uzo Aduba's full name is Uzoamaka Nwaneka  Aduba. She told Seth Meyers a story about her wanting to change her name when she was little (starting around 1:04).

 

She wanted to change her name to Zoe because Uzoamaka was difficult to pronounce. Her mother told her, "If they can learn to say Tchaikovsky, Dostoyevsky, and Michelangelo, they can learn to say Uzoamaka."
It's the perfect come back, in my opinion, to any argument about a name that might be more difficult to pronounce.

I think race plays a part in this conversation, obviously. The idea that there are black parents who are torn on whether to give their child an African name with wonderful meaning or give them a white sounding name so they can fit in isn't right. Brittany means "Of Britain." There is no meaning to that name, and there's not really anything wrong with choosing a name because you like the sound of it. But when people are looked down upon because their name, which was likely chosen because it has a bigger meaning, then it becomes an issue.


I think one way to help this is to recognize that there are celebrities who aren't changing their names to make them easier to pronounce, as shown in this link.