To My Fellow Americans With Weird, Un-American Names
Some people want to marry into money. I’d like to marry into pronounceability.
My name is a foreign-sounding mouthful. A first name that’s one letter shy of a polarizing deity. A last name that would make George Costanza quip, “The alphabet called, they’re running out of O’s.”
My name is a permanent nametag that reads HELLO. I’M NOT FROM AROUND HERE.
Except I am from around here. I’ve lived in the US for the last 28 years, a proud citizen for the last 18. If you’re still reading this, maybe your name is even longer and harder to pronounce than mine for the average American.
Maybe you, too, have spent untold hours of your life spelling it over the phone (No, that’s a ‘Y’ as in ‘Y U no listen?’), correcting its misspelling on important documents (Anna would love to accept your offer, but she doesn’t exist), and explaining its origin to people who follow up a handshake with the inevitable, “Where’s that from?”
Maybe you, too, have a chip on your shoulder regarding this question.
It’s no secret that our government is in a tizzy over immigrants in general, and visitors from certain countries in particular. I can’t fathom how scary and unsettling it is for those of you with not only foreign-sounding names but appearances deemed potentially threatening.
As American as apple pierogi
And yet, as July 4th rolls around again, it’s hard not to feel grateful that we’re technically American. That we’re all here. That we or someone related to us had the balls to completely start over in a new land, learn a new language and adapt to smiling excessively.
For most of us, America was an upgrade. This melting pot named after an Italian mapmaker whose name would undoubtedly be mispronounced by most Americans. Amerigo Vespucci. A name that ironically sounds distinctly un-American.
What’s in a name? Seemingly everything.
How do we measure Americanness? Is it binary — you’re either in or out, a one or a zero? Or is American identity more of a sliding scale, with those of us born elsewhere allowed to claim a hybrid heritage, fusing the best aspects of each culture and discarding the parts that don’t serve us?
Actually, our names weigh disproportionately heavy on our cultural identity, whether we like it or not. A gal named Georgia Washington just sounds more local than a guy named Samir Na…Naga…Notgonnaworkhereanymore.
As more of our human interactions move online, a name is not only our first impression but often the central source of inference about a person until we actually meet. If your weird name gets you past the digital round in a job or date search — so you can attempt to charm the Daves, Matts, Jills and Emilys with your shining personality — there’s a whole slew of scientific research showing that unfamiliar or foreign-sounding names negatively affect your salary and job title, along with your dating prospects and perceived attractiveness.
Why is that? You could theorize that we’re surrounded by closed-minded, xenophobic, racist, anti-Semitic eugenicists. But the far more likely explanation is that as humans, we evolved to innately gravitate toward our tribe, toward the people most likely to speak our language, literally and figuratively. Snap judgments happen automatically, despite our best efforts to not blindly put people into boxes.
Our brains love boxes. They run on energy saver mode whenever possible, which means categorizing things and people quickly, then correcting as needed. Psychologists call these mental shortcuts and biases heuristics. That looks dangerous. He’s cute. She’s tall. They seem cool. She’s an outsider. No wait — weird name, but she’s just like me!
While our brains love boxes, they hate feeling or being viewed as stupid. Pronouncing and butchering unfamiliar names makes us sound ridiculous. So we try to avoid it.
Change what your Mama gave ya?
There is scant data on how many immigrants eventually Americanize their names in order to fit in and have better job prospects. But in Hollywood the practice is as common as Botox. Jennifer Aniston was Jennifer Anastassakis until her parents strategically de-Greeked the family name. Dame Helen Mirren was born a Mironov thanks to her Russian father. Mark Cuban would have been Mark Chabenisky if his grandparents hadn’t changed it after emigrating.
If you’re a regular person who lives out of the spotlight, changing your name can feel like a drastic measure, an admission of shame or betrayal toward your heritage. At the very least, it’s a logistical pain.
My family once gathered around the dinner table with a phone book to brainstorm surnames that would make us less foreign. Gono-anything sounds vaguely like an STD, so that was out. Gonzalez or Gomez would take us south of the border. My mom suggested Gold, which my dad vetoed for unclear reasons. With no unanimous contenders, we defaulted to the status quo.
Like a shopping cart with one screwy wheel that keeps veering left, having a weird name in America is just annoying enough to slow you down, but not so annoying that most of us would switch to a different cart.
You’ve already filled it with stuff, after all.
The silver lining
If you feel uneasy about all this name-bashing, I’ll concede that’s it’s not impossible to succeed with a weird name. Schwarzenegger. Krzyzewski. Barack Obama. (Though perhaps a more overtly American name like Barry O’Batman could have mitigated doubts about his birthplace.)
Would McDonald’s have spread around the world like greasy wildfire if the name didn’t sound so wholesome and American? Would Oscars host Jimmy Kimmel have made fun of a guest named “Yulerie” if most people didn’t instinctively laugh along? Name-ism is everywhere, and it’s probably here to stay, because human nature.
Kia Hamadanchy, a California democrat, is trying to become the first Iranian-American ever elected to Congress. Numerous politicians have strongly advised he change his name to have any chance of winning. He replied, “Never under any circumstances would I ever change my name. My name is the reason why I’m running.”
That’s awesome and inspiring. I still have mixed feelings about mine, but perhaps our exotic proper nouns help keep America on its toes. Lady Liberty isn’t a Smith or a Jones — she’s all of us combined.
In spite of everything, the name America still stands for freedom and possibility. I guess that’s worth stumbling over my own.
