i.
“Your name is Tasbeeh. Don’t let them call you by anything else.”
My mother speaks to me in Arabic; the command sounds more forceful in her mother tongue, a Libyan dialect that is all sharp edges and hard, guttural sounds. I am seven years old and it has never occurred to me to disobey my mother. Until twelve years old, I would believe God gave her the supernatural ability to tell when I’m lying.
“Don’t let them give you an English nickname,” my mother insists once again, “I didn’t raise amreekan.”
My mother spits out this last word with venom. Amreekan. Americans. It sounds like a curse coming out of her mouth. Eight years in this country and she’s still not convinced she lives here. She wears her headscarf tightly around her neck, wades across the school lawn in long, floor-skimming skirts. Eight years in this country and her tongue refuses to bend and soften for the English language. It embarrasses me, her heavy Arab tongue, wrapping itself so forcefully around the clumsy syllables of English, strangling them out of their meaning.
But she is fierce and fearless. I have never heard her apologize to anyone. She will hold up long grocery lines checking and double-checking the receipt in case they’re trying to cheat us. My humiliation is heavy enough for the both of us. My English is not. Sometimes I step away, so people don’t know we’re together but my dark hair and skin betray me as a member of her tribe.
On my first day of school, my mother presses a kiss to my cheek.
“Your name is Tasbeeh,” she says again, like I’ve forgotten. “Tasbeeh.”
ii.
Roll call is the worst part of my day. After a long list of Brittanys, Jonathans, Ashleys, and Yen-but-call-me-Jens, the teacher rests on my name in silence. She squints. She has never seen this combination of letters strung together in this order before. They are incomprehensible. What is this h doing at the end? Maybe it is a typo.
“Tas…?”
“Tasbeeh,” I mutter, with my hand half up in the air. “Tasbeeh.”
A pause.
“Do you go by anything else?”
“No,” I say. “Just Tasbeeh. Tas-beeh.”
“Tazbee. All right. Alex?”
She moves on before I can correct her. She said it wrong. She said it so wrong. I have never heard my name said so ugly before, like it’s a burden. Her entire face contorts as she says it, like she is expelling a distasteful thing from her mouth. She avoids saying it for the rest of the day, but she has already baptized me with this new name. It is the name everyone knows me by, now, for the next six years I am in elementary school. “Tazbee,” a name with no grace, no meaning, no history; it belongs in no language.
“Tazbee,” says one of the students on the playground, later. “Like Tazmanian Devil?” Everyone laughs. I laugh too. It is funny, if you think about it.
iii.
I do not correct anyone for years. One day, in third grade, a plane flies above our school.
“Your dad up there, Bin Laden?” The voice comes from behind. It is dripping in derision.
“My name is Tazbee,” I say. I said it in this heavy English accent, so he may know who I am. I am American. But when I turn around they are gone.
iv.
I go to middle school far, far away. It is a 30-minute drive from our house. It’s a beautiful set of buildings located a few blocks off the beach. I have never in my life seen so many blond people, so many colored irises. This is a school full of Ashtons and Penelopes, Patricks and Sophias. Beautiful names that belong to beautiful faces. The kind of names that promise a lifetime of social triumph.
I am one of two headscarved girls at this new school. We are assigned the same gym class. We are the only ones in sweatpants and long-sleeved undershirts. We are both dreading roll call. When the gym teacher pauses at my name, I am already red with humiliation.
“How do I say your name?” she asks.
“Tazbee,” I say.
“Can I just call you Tess?”
I want to say yes. Call me Tess. But my mother will know, somehow. She will see it written in my eyes. God will whisper it in her ear. Her disappointment will overwhelm me.
“No,” I say, “Please call me Tazbee.”
I don’t hear her say it for the rest of the year.
v.
My history teacher calls me Tashbah for the entire year. It does not matter how often I correct her, she reverts to that misshapen sneeze of a word. It is the ugliest conglomeration of sounds I have ever heard.
When my mother comes to parents’ night, she corrects her angrily, “Tasbeeh. Her name is Tasbeeh.” My history teacher grimaces. I want the world to swallow me up.
vi.
My college professors don’t even bother. I will only know them for a few months of the year. They smother my name in their mouths. It is a hindrance for their tongues. They hand me papers silently. One of them mumbles it unintelligibly whenever he calls on my hand. Another just calls me “T.”
My name is a burden. My name is a burden. My name is a burden. I am a burden.
vii.
On the radio I hear a story about a tribe in some remote, rural place that has no name for the color blue. They do not know what the color blue is. It has no name so it does not exist. It does not exist because it has no name.
viii.
At the start of a new semester, I walk into a math class. My teacher is blond and blue-eyed. I don’t remember his name. When he comes to mine on the roll call, he takes the requisite pause. I hold my breath.
“How do I pronounce your name?” he asks.
I say, “Just call me Tess.”
“Is that how it’s pronounced?”
I say, “No one’s ever been able to pronounce it.”
“That’s probably because they didn’t want to try,” he said. “What is your name?”
When I say my name, it feels like redemption. I have never said it this way before. Tasbeeh. He repeats it back to me several times until he’s got it. It is difficult for his American tongue. His has none of the strength, none of the force of my mother’s. But he gets it, eventually, and it sounds beautiful. I have never heard it sound so beautiful. I have never felt so deserving of a name. My name feels like a crown.
ix.
“Thank you for my name, mama.”
x.
When the barista asks me my name, sharpie poised above the coffee cup, I tell him: “My name is Tasbeeh. It’s a tough t clinging to a soft a, which melts into a silky ssss, which loosely hugs the b, and the rest of my name is a hard whisper — eeh. Tasbeeh. My name is Tasbeeh. Hold it in your mouth until it becomes a prayer. My name is a valuable undertaking. My name requires your rapt attention. Say my name in one swift note – Tasbeeeeeeeh – sand let the h heat your throat like cinnamon. Tasbeeh. My name is an endeavor. My name is a song. Tasbeeh. It means giving glory to God. Tasbeeh. Wrap your tongue around my name, unravel it with the music of your voice, and give God what he is due.”
Tags: names, no you’re crying, praying, tasbeeh herwees, writing
Beautiful.
Oh my god, this hit me right in the heart. I’ve also got a name (it’s Finnish) that comes with chronic mispronunciation and people wanting to nickname it. I have lived these scenarios. I have put up with Americans giving it a hard T and trying to find some way to jam the J in there hard and solid when in reality it’s soft and gentle, barely a letter at all. I know these feelings. I even had a professor just like yours, trying over and over again until he’d learned to say it properly. I feel like I could have written this myself, of course from a different perspective. I got to “Thank you for my name, mama,” and I just started to cry. Thank you so, so much for sharing. This is so beautiful, and I can relate so, so much. Thank you.
Such a sweet article, and so lovely to see your reply! I named my daughter after my grandmother, a Finnish immigrant, whose name was changed, both pronunciation and spelling, to an English version upon arrival, (her family suggested it). I loved her Finnish name, and thought I had correctly pronounced it, until after my daughter was born and renamed in her honor, Eeva. I then learned my grandmother had never corrected my American accent. My daughter is a lucky one though: it’s short, easier to spell and pronounce and our country is now full of ethnically beautiful names.
Yes I’m crying. Thank you.
This is beautiful writing and a beautiful, marvelous name. I’ve been rolling it around in my mouth for the last couple minutes, and it is indeed quite poetic and graceful on the tongue!
oh no, but i can’t cry right now because I’m in a coworking space directly facing too many people but ah I’m crying anyway
oh oh oh, oh WOW.
(and just this morning I had my name mispronounced to me, I’ve worked with this guy for two years, is it worth correcting him, will he even remember)
This was SPECTACULAR.
This is absolutely gorgeous.
viii, you guys. oh man. I think it’s so, so rude of people to be like “can I just call you X” when your name is Y. Put like 15 seconds effort in and Y doesn’t have to have stones drop in their guts every time the wrong sounds hit.
Tasbeeh this was beautiful. Toasties all over the world are quietly saying (praying?) your name (correctly!) right now, into our smart phones and computer monitors.
Yeah, it’s super rude. Only surpassed by its even-ruder cousin, “I’m just going to call you X.” They don’t even ask permission sometimes, they just decide a different name. I once had someone say, “I’m just going to call you Tara.” It’s a whole new name! Not even an attempted nickname of my own name! The “No, you’re not,” he got in return stunned him, but it worked.
GO YOU. That is perfect.
I don’t understand this mentality of “I don’t understand how to pronounce your name, how rude of you to have that name!” when it should be “I don’t understand how to pronounce your name, how embarrassing OF ME.”
I’m usually like “[uncertain effort]? I’m so sorry, I’m not sure I’m pronouncing it correctly, is that right?” followed by better efforts with guidance, until correct pronunciation.
I’ve never put up with that crap. As a kid I would get visibly angry, a little shaking, fist-balling blonde whirlwind of “THAT’S NOT MY NAAAAME!!” As an adult it’s morphed into something more like calm fury, a terse “No, you’re not” is about as nice as I can put it. My name is my name, damnit, calling me “Tara” because it might be easier is just not even an option.
And attempted nicknames of your own name aren’t much better! I’ve always hated being called by the nickname versions of my name. They make me feel like a child, and I always saw them as different names. Every so often I still have to correct people. I’ve given up on correcting my aunt, mostly, because I love her so, but I would rather be called by my name.
Like the reporter to tried to call Quvenzhane Wallis by Annie (as she’s playing the role in an upcoming movie) http://shereader.tumblr.com/post/43962980014/for-…
I got that all the time growing up and my given name is a “normal” American name! I hated the nicknames for it. Why are people so rude about names. is it the same reason they’re rude about hair touching and hand-grabbing-for-ring-viewing.
People would be really weird about it, leading me to stew in anger for months and months that they went to a nickname and I was too polite to correct them. And then it’d all come out in some horrible passive-agressive form. So go you for being more forthright!
(But I also hated the name in general, so I just gave myself a new name when I was 15 and now everyone calls me Keri and life is improved. Now, it doesn’t bother me when people call me Katie or Kelly. Which seems kind of weird as I reflect on it? Like, I worked hard to rename myself and teach everyone to call me by my new name, and here I am not caring when people get it wrong.)
Two year old me was very certain that my name was my name and nicknames were NOT okay. I’ve pretty much kept my foot down on the subject since, although I’ve relaxed a little (nicknames given to me by people who actually know me are allowed. Changing my name to suit yourself, not okay when I was two, not okay now.)
My mother got I’m going to call you Mary’ at her first job. This was in the 70s, after many years of Mary-Angela instead of Mariangela. I always thought it was quite rude and why can’t people just make an effort? The reverse happened to me in high school Italian class, when one teacher started calling everyone by the Italian equivalent of their names.
I hit a point sometime in high school where my friends would correct people’s pronunciation of my name before I could get there. I’m reasonably used to a vague Anglicization of ‘saa-ra’, but Sarah is absolutely not on, and if you can wrap your tongue around the Italian ‘r’, that’s even better. The number of mis-spellings of both my first and last names was astounding – so many extra r’s and t’s and d’a. My first ‘real’ nickname was ‘Sarz’, which I refused to spell with an ‘s’ on the end because this was around the time SARS hit and I absolutely did not want to be associated with an infectious disease. NO WAY (WO)MAN.
Yup. Tasbeeh, I am definitely whispering your name into my laptop, hoping I’ve got it close. This was lovely.
Wow.
(Trying to say it now, but there seems to be some sort of lump in my throat.)
Hey hey sisterhood of mispronounced (and misspelled) names!! My last name is even worse than my first name — I don’t even try with that anymore. I have a weird relationship with my name, although that’s partly because people don’t realize I’m “ethnic” until they hear it. Weird privilege dynamic.
Also most people don’t even ask “Can I call you —–?” they just make up a nickname and run with it!! like what even.
Oh man, the ladies at my high school thought I had a sister because they mispronounced my Spanish surname the same as this other girl’s Israeli (I think) surname. WHAT. NO. WHAT.
Everyone in my childhood pronounced my name wrong, (technically, they still do, according to my Irish Relatives, and as it’s an Irish name I assume they’d know) but then it got really popular around the time I hit about ten. Now I just have the weird feeling of hearing my name called in a supermarket and turning round to see some sulky teenager stomping towards their mum.
I’ve never had this problem, fortunately! But when someone has EVER known anyone before with my name they get super excited and feel the need to tell me about it.
This is gorgeous.
This is beautiful. I love your name, Please correct me if I say t incorrectly.
Gorgeous piece. Simply gorgeous.
This is gorgeous. I’m so glad you included the pronunciation key in the last part, so we all know we’re saying and reading it correctly.
This is incredibly beautiful. One of my favourite pieces the Toast has ever published.
I agree!
Definitely one of my favourites, too.
Mine too.
I hope this isn’t exoticizing, but I actually also love names that have unfamiliar sounds in them? Like, oh that combination of sounds is really pretty, I’ve never heard it before. Hits the same brain place as poetry (or prose I guess) that combines words pleasingly. And just the sounds of certain languages too.
Dear Tasbeeh,
Thank you so much. Your writing is beautiful, as is your name. I hope to see it again on this website!
Signed,
Marium/Marian/Mary Anne/Murry-um/Muriel/Mer-man/Myron/Mertem/Can-I-just-call-you-Mimi (nope)
This is amazing. I believe names have power and it is important that you are known and called by the name you want to be called. I know many people who have Americanized names to make their lives easier in their industry and make their colleagues more comfortable. I feel that it’s so unfair that they feel the need to do that. But at the same time, I don’t know that I can say anything about this….. my name is relatively ‘American.’
say it soft and it’s almost like praying
*dissolves*
This is beautiful.
this is amazing and tasbeeh is a beautiful name. thank you for teaching me how to say it!
This is so fantastic. Thank you.
This is beyond lovely. I’m another person choked up at my desk, grateful for your words, whispering your name into my keyboard.
Perfect. Thank you so much.
I really loved this …so VERY much.
So gorgeous and so heartbreaking. Thank you!
When she was very small, my sister Mairead (rhymes with parade) refused to answer when people got her name wrong in roll call. “May-reed,” they’d say, and she’d grit her teeth in silence, and they’d assume she wasn’t there. Eventually she learned that she had to give them the chance to get it right, and by the end of high school, her classmates knew it was coming and would fill in that pause for the teachers. It’s much easier when people are on your side!
Which is to say: I am on your side, and this was beautiful.
I work around international students from everywhere. Their names can be so … foreign. But I try hard to pronounce their names the way they do. Because I know my name, I know how I feel when I hear it spoken, and they all deserve the same. I refuse to use their “American names”. Thank you, Tasbeeh, for reminding me that it’s worth the effort. I wish there were a sound clip on this page to hear your name pronounced correctly – and as described in the final paragraph.
Oh wow. This was amazing!
Having a wee cry at my desk. Really beautiful piece.
Everyone has said what I want to say.. I’m just going to sit here and click the thumbs up on everyone’s comments.
My name is a burden. My name is a burden. My name is a burden. I am a burden.
Heartbreaking.
Oof, sorry. I have been trying to pronounce my friend Smriti’s name correctly for 6 years. She tells me I’m getting close.
The fact that you’re trying means so much. It really, really does. Please don’t stop.
This piece . . . beautiful, enrapturing writing. My heart.
Thank you Tasbeeh this was beautiful. I hope one day they will all know your name.
“I’m just going to call you Annie.”
“My name is not Annie. It’s Quvenzhané.”
Why do people do this to children? Why wouldn’t you want to learn these beautiful new names?
That sent me into a spittle-flecked rage that’s hard to describe: hell, I can pronounce it properly and I’m not a professional interviewer who’d had weeks to prepare for this moment. It was unprofessional, it was sloppy, it was the height of disrespect.
But Quvenzhané Wallis’ poise and grace was more powerful than all my rage.
Right?! I know it’s completely beside the point, but her name’s not even that hard, goddammit.
wait that HAPPENED? I assumed you were making it up until Elsa’s comment
It did – an AP reporter. I am trying to find a sensible link to it but all I can find is the Onion stuff, this is only mentioned in passing.
I know! Um, we made up ALL the names, guys, it’s not like God gave us a list of ten fuckin’ names and you get to pick whether you’re Meg, Jo, Amy, or Dead Beth.
Wow, wow, wow, you are all too kind! Thank you so much. This is such a warm and welcoming space.
This was absolutely beautiful, and really spoke to me. My name is Ehsan, and I’ve gone by Es since I was small because I did not have your strength to go on and on and on correcting people until the end of time. I’m so used to responding to ‘the requisite pause’, and it can be so exhausting.
My mother’s English – my father was Iranian, but he left when I was little and moved back to Iran, so I never had any influences wanting me not to Anglicise my name.
So beautiful. Reading this brings back a flood of adolescent Muslim American memories. Yup… crying over my morning coffee 🙂
I wish this story also included an audio clip of the author saying her name, and her mother saying her name, and that math teacher saying her name. It’s a beautiful name.
When I was younger I babysat for some of the children in my mother’s religious circle (Baha’i’). These girls had the most lovely names. I honestly remember thinking that their names sounded the way I imagine the wind would over desert sand – wide open and soft. The oldest patiently corrected my pronunciation on their names over and over (I was 12) until I got it as close to right as she felt I needed to be. The idea of not even trying makes me sad and disappointed in people.
This was beautiful and I’m so glad to have read it.
Names! I had a friend in high school called Tasneem who I remember explaining to me not to ‘z’ the s, in history club, it is great to be reminded of her, and to not ‘z’ esses. My surname is ‘not english’ sounding, but nobody knows where it’s from! Nobody! So I just make a big joke of everybody commenting on it, and it being misspelled on every bill ever; it could from Poland, it could be from mars, it could have been made up at any point.
I have an easy first name but an impossible and uncommon last name. Only recently have I started actually saying my family name – with no shame and no mumbling – when introducing myself. It began when I lost my grandfather, when I realized how much love he had for me. For my roots, for my ancestors, I am finally speaking my name!
I join everyone in saying this made me cry. Out loud. For real.
Beautiful piece. Thank you!
Absolutely gorgeous. My parents gave me a nice american first name and hid my chinese name in my middle name but I still managed to be deeply, incredibly ashamed of it until early high school, telling as few people as I had to and correcting no one when they mispronounced it.
Ayesha Siddiqi posted something on tumblr a few months ago about this kind of experience and I will forever be in her debt because it both gave me this incredible piece by Hiwot Adilow, which I have never been able to watch all the way through without tearing up, and introduced me to Warsan Shire.
Yes, I saw that! And it gave me chills.
Lunch break tears. Thank you.
This is beautiful.
And people can be so weird about names. My name is Yasmin, and I go with the unobjectionable anglicized rhymes-with-jasmine pronunciation for day-to-day. But it’s made me bizarrely protective of the “right” pronunciation of my name. I like enforcing the code switching that is the difference between the way Americans pronounce my name and the way my family or other Middle Eastern people pronounce my name. So when people badger me about the “right” way to pronounce my name, I end up getting weirdly defensive and want to tell them “don’t bother, it’s weird to hear you say it the way my family does, stick with rhymes-with-jasmine.” Is that weird? That’s weird, right?
My mom, on the other hand, just gets called Shakira by people (that’s not her name), which she hates, so she’s given up and started giving her name as Sue. A lot of my relatives have picked anglicized nicknames, which makes me sad, because their names are beautiful as they are.
I respect your mom’s method. An elderly member of my extended family has a learning disability involving language. Common communication can be difficult. Learning new words or sounds is always a struggle and usually impossible. When new people marry into or are born into her family, she is often given an Americanized name to use to save her from embarrassment because she would struggle a long time before realizing she cannot hear/understand/repeat the unfamiliar name. It also saves the owner of that often beautiful name from hearing it butchered repeatedly for the next 20 years.
Possibly weird, but I’ve had a similar reaction to a nickname. I’m known to most people by my full name, but family and some childhood friends, all British, use a shortened version. When a Canadian friend-of-a-friend called and asked if it was <nickname>, I actually said no and genuinely thought she had the wrong person. I just don’t associate myself with <nickname> when not said in a British accent. It’s very disconcerting.
Beautiful piece!! love this mashaAllah
I can’t tell you how much this article means to me, how much I identify with it, but without your incredible strength. I allowed the kids of my youth to rename me through their teasing — and even my mom called me “Tess”. I wanted to fit in. But I think about the cost a lot. So thank you so much for saying all the things I have felt for most of my life.
Love this piece. As a teacher, it’s a wonderful reminder of how powerful it is to call students by their names (pronounced correctly and in the manner that the student wishes). Instead of reading students’ names off on the first day, I always have students introduce themselves, and I make an effort to get their names right. Hearing it aloud before I say it helps me remember their names much more, too!
Thank you for this.
Stuff like this is why I love The Toast. And you. (All of you).
My name is difficult too, because it’s Southern, and kind of trashy/postbellum sharecropper-esque. A fancy word my great-great- saw or heard and wasn’t sure how to spell or say again. The only people who have said it exactly right, ever, are my mother and my father and my grandmother and my husband. My little brother’s mouth can’t make the noise, it seems, and other people don’t generally bother. And even my husband only gets it absolutely right about 80% of the time. If you’re in a hurry at all, even just a bit, it breaks. It’s not even that difficult. It’s all mental,or a lack of mentality maybe. I don’t even try at coffee places. I want to, now.
I would love to know your name – it sounds beautiful and I don’t even know what it is! 🙂
So beautiful. So right. It’s such a common courtesy, saying someone’s name right, and yet, so few people try to do it. (And why am I tearing up over this! Not even a dead kitty in the darn thing! DAMN YOU TASBEEH AND YOUR BEAUTIFUL WRITING!)
I don’t think my name is even particularly hard but I’ve been called Kristin, Christine, Chrissy, Kir, Cat, Kitty, Kiki, Chrissy, Kristy- very few people get it right on the first try- Kirsten. And not Keeeeersten, like Ms. Dunst. Hard. Guttural. Curse. Ten.
YOU DON’T CURSE TEN!
Sorry. Doctor Who twitch.
Me too. It seems that Americans on the internet always assume that Kirsten is Kristen. When I was a kid in England, people always thought it was Kirsty, which I have never answered to. Back in Scotland, it’s not a problem.
I don’t know how to pronounce Tasbeeh, and I’m sure my first attempt would be Tazbee, but I’d try to improve if I was corrected. I had an Irish student on placement with me, Niamh, and I just couldn’t get it right. My clumsy mouth can’t do any better than Neve, which misses out all the subtle beauty of the correct pronunciation. I tried, I really did, but just couldn’t get it.
‘Kristen’ popped up in a horror movie in the ’80s, and now Americans recognize it as an actual name, instead of me mispronouncing my own name. They’d go down the whole K-sound list – “Kirsten? Kirstie? Christian? Karen? Karen M…esher?”
Kristen. Kristen Mansker. Pronounced just as it’s spelled.
(Though it was funny when an elementary school teacher tried to rush through it, and ended up with a horrified, “Christian Massacre?!”)
I can’t speak for all the Ashleys and Brittanys of the world, but just know that, for the most part, us generically named kids are perfectly aware that our names mean nothing, that they’re bland and boring. You’d be surprised how many of us envy girls like you.
Thanks for writing such a beautiful piece!
Best,
Jessica
I know you mean well, but comments like this don’t help. Frankly stated, your envy is based on a superficial understanding, one that should have been deepened by reading a piece like this.
It is definitely a different sort of problem, but it is annoying to walk into any classroom knowing that 10 other people in the room are also named Ashley.
Jessica does mean something. Google it :-). It’s my name too and I had it before it was popular and I was actually ashamed of having such a rare name for a while.
I say my (Christian, less common) name doesn’t mean anything, too: my mother picked it, not for its meaning or as a blessing or other meaningful reason, but because she arbitrarily liked it. My surname has a similar story (my grandfather’s arbitrary decision). I am jealous of people whose names signify anything about their history.
Tasbeeh, you are the only Tasbeeh I have ever met and I absolutely loved your name from the moment I met you What an honest, articulate and gently powerful piece! The last sentence was just soooo beautiful.
Much love, Tasbeeh <3
Great post. Thank you.
Hi I am having a lot of Feelings right now, please add me to the massive list of people who found this beautiful.
I’m used to people mangling my name – it’s unfamiliar to them as a name, they see it written down and they think it must be pronounced differently than it looks, or they hear it and assume they’ve misheard. I remember cringeing my way through a course where the lecturer called me Nina the whole time and seemed not to hear me every time I corrected her. But this is not a parallel experience: it came without the additional baggage of racist bullshit. Still, it horrifies me that (white/Anglo) people will take it a step further by demanding that something so personal as someone’s name be ‘simplified’. Some of my friends have eventually reclaimed their own names, no longer offering an Anglo one instead of a Chinese one, or insisting on the correct inflection of an Indian name, deciding that it’s time that other people just deal with it.
You said exactly what I was going to about the “racist bullshit” aspect. My first name is frequently misspelled and my last is mispronounced more often than not, but my name doesn’t really scan as Spanish in origin, and I’m far enough removed from my hispanic roots in my daily life experience that any discomfort I get from people screwing up my name is largely superficial. I can’t imagine how much more defeating it must feel to “give in” when one’s name is tied so closely to one’s culture and family history, along with the undercurrent of racism that usually goes along with people not even being willing to try.
Also, this piece is beautiful and heartbreaking in the best way. Thank you for sharing it with us, Tasbeeh.
My kid’s the only white kid in a class of mostly Latin@, Muslim, and Phillipin@ kids. His (white) teacher has zero problem pronouncing the names of the other kids, first and last, but when she gets to my kid’s “weird” Eastern European name she just giggles and kind of trails off. I’m super SUPER glad she’s made an effort with the other kids’ names, but it’s frustrating that she gives up so fast with his last name. She also puts the stress on the wrong syllable of his first name (Nikola prn Ni KOL a and not NICK o la) and I’ve corrected her a few times and it’s just… how long do you keep doing that? After awhile it just gets really obvious that they don’t CARE. My husband suffered through high school with a ridiculous nick name that he was resigned too because none of his teachers or friends cared to take the time to learn how to pronounce his beautiful name. I refuse to let people truncate my kid’s last name. It’s lazy and mean. And I still feel guilty, almost five years later, for compromising on an “easy” name for our kid, and not one of the options like Vuk that are more “foreign.”
The saddest name story I ever witnessed: I used to work for a place whose mission and business was furthering the learning of Asian languages. Naturally, it was a very international place and almost everyone there was multilingual. More than half the employees (including me) spoke Mandarin. One day a new intern, who was from Beijing, started. She introduced herself in a staff meeting as Ming…since that was her name. (Note also that this is not in any way challenging to pronounce, not that that would be an excuse.) The Terrible Boss (who, ironically, was Chinese herself) said “Okay, but do you have an English name?”
“Uh…….Amy, I guess,” said Ming. “You can call me Amy if you want. But… you can call me Ming.”
The Terrible Boss called her Amy for the duration of the internship. Everybody else called her Ming.
Love your writing and havefollowed your posts on twitter since the Libyan Revolution. Wonderful writing and very touching. We Greeks have similar problems and only recently do we insist on leaving names intact. Glad you did!
What everyone else said. This was beautiful.
A lot of people in my family have “American names” (Gina for Jigna, Roger for Raju, Dee for Dipak, and so on), and I understand that it makes it easier for other people, but fuck those people. These are our names. I don’t even like my name that much (Sunil), but it’s my name. It defines who I am and where I come from. I’m not going to be “Sam” or “Neil” for you. Although I wouldn’t mind being Sam Neill, now that I think about it.
This piece is so beautiful and so important. Thank you.
Amazing writing. Thank you. The pain wasn’t what brought tears for me. The final furious beauty did.
Bless.
This is amazing. Thank you for sharing it.
thank you so much
My name is Tanith. [Tan][Nith] not [Ta][Neeth] or [Ta][Net] or Tabitha or TAMMY! I am none of that!
I’ve heard practically called every mispronunciation for it my entire life, to the point I just dealt with my own family’s mispronunciations for years. I can count the people on one hand who got my name right the first try.
I can so relate to you Tasbeeh, My teachers also paused at my name, they almost always call me by my Germanic Last Name first so they can just get role done.
Everytime I order something at a place where they ask your name. I have to repeat it at least 3 times. They ask to spell it and I get called “Tammy” as a default.
My friends say, “Be lucky your name isn’t Chelsea, or Andrea.” All my life I wanted it to be something like that. I just wanted to be normal.
I’m learning to like it more, but it’s still taking time. It’s hard because my entire name is strange. I have names from 4 different cultures because I’m racially mixed. (Lots of middle names..) My name reflects who I am.
Beautifully written. This pretty much described my schooling experience. The piece was so lyrical and gorgeously written!
God, this essay grabs me. I dealt with this from the American teacher perspective and eventually learned that the smile on a student’s name every time I called her by it was worth every second I spent with her trying and trying to pronounce it properly. Using someone’s name is like saying, “I see you.”
I’m retweeting a link to this essay. .
It’s actually really RUDE to just assign someone a new name because you can’t be bothered to learn how to say it properly. In my two and a half years living in the States, only two or three people were interested and practiced saying my name till they got it right. After a few months of exasperation, I offered for them to just call me Z just so people could stop butchering my lovely name.
People here in the UK are a lot more interested and willing to learn your name, and thanks to Eastenders, now most British people can say my name.
This is beautiful; I wish there was a clip of sound so I could hear you pronounce your name the way that you want it to be said and heard.
This is amazing. My sister and I both have really short names with really easy-to-pronounce syllables, yet our names are regularly butchered.
Absolutely gorgeous. I had a boss who told me part of my job was to overcome shyness and call customers by name, because part of business was building relationships and the first step in the process was showing people that you really SAW them. I am sure I have annoyed dozens of customers with my requests to, no, please, just say it aloud for me, am I even close? But the ones who indulged me and were patient with my ineptitude remain in my heart to this day.
I may not have the same pronunciation problem, but I have the same feeling you have. My name is always spelled wrong, spelled the common way. Every time people spell my name, I spell it for them making sure they spell it correctly. Other spellings are not what my mother named me, and so I strongly make sure my name is spelt correctly.
Beautiful, Tasbeeh.
Your story is so touching!
Without the cultural influences, I too understand the hurt from having a name people dont bother to pronounce properly. I even have family… blood relatives who dont know how to pronounce my name correctly.
Sad thing is, both for me and for them is that its not even a difficult name… you just need to pay attention when its said. This frustrated me for years… and on occasion still does.
my name is Alisa… Ah-lee-sa… Lisa with an A in front.
I get Lisa, Alyssa, Alisha, Eliza
Thank you so much Tasbeeh for telling your story… you have a Glorious name, and talent for telling your story!
Beautiful. Your name, this piece, both of them.
In love. Thank you for saying all of this. For putting it so beautifully.
You’re amazing.
I can’t wait to read more from you.
(PS you inspire me to write again)
Thank you for this. I’m going to redouble my efforts to try and pronounce my students’ names correctly. I know I get it wrong, and it’s awkward for me and awkward for them, but it wouldn’t take very long to get it right. Sometimes I make them say it for me a few times, and that usually does the trick, but I don’t always take the time, and I should.
The actual worst is Brianna, which is a really common name, but it’s never spelled or pronounced the same way, and if you put the wrong emphasis on the wrong syllable… but there are so many of them and all of them pronounce it differently and I will never remember!
I’m guessing the coffee came back for “Tabitha”. Or Timothy.
My parents are French, and whilst I don’t keep count, the number of times people lazily read Stéphane as Stephanie… their surprise at being confronted with a short bearded guy never gets old. I normally just tell people my name is Steve.
I refer to certain people as “saying my name like they got a damn snake in they mouth.” #eyeroll #ifeelyou
Just lovely.
My name is Tasnim. I am of libyan origin too. This story touched me more than anything i’ve ever read in my entire life. Thank you. Thank you so much.
Symptoms: watery eyes, lump in throat, warm heart
Cause: reading this beautiful article ma sha Allah
All the yes. This was beautiful.
This was awesome! Mashallah! Jazak’Allah khair
Your name is a gift. You are a gift. Thank you for sharing your gift with us.
Great work.
^^^THIS … a thousands time THIS ^^^^
SAY MY NAME … SAY IT … A-M-I-N-A-H … aaaah meeeee naaaaaaaah not haminah, not hominy, not mina, armina, armenia, ah-my-na … AMINAH … Say it the way it is meant to be said or do not say it at all. Ask me and I will say it for you. Do not butcher my name. Do not give me a new name. Do not give me a nickname. Do not call me “…” for short. Do not complain about my name. My name is mine, not yours. My name is who I am. My name is the ONLY name I will answer to so if you want to communicate with you have better shape your lips…1..2…3… and go….. aaaaah meeeeeeee naaaaaaah
also … my name is Aminah. the barista part hit me so hard. I swear that 2 days ago … a barista called me ANUBIS … and the one who took my order asked how to spell my name and wrote it on the cup correctly, in decent hand writing. I knew it was my drink and was like anubis? really? do i know you cause i got a cat name anubis …he was like oh i saw the a and n and just assumed. OK who are you that you see an a and n and you assume anubis? he was like i duno i can not read hieroglyphics. true story. this happened. I said well I CAN read hieroglyphics and this is not it, this a pretty well known language called english, this word is my name and it is spelled phonetically … and he messed up my drink … grrr
Tasbeeh, we had a class together in middle school with Mrs. Overton and I remember her struggling to pronounce your name. It was funny at the time to us and I’m sure to you too (to some extent), but that doesn’t change how it represents your struggle. You have become an excellent writer and I wish you all the luck in the world.
God bless
Thank you so much, Jackson! I hope you’re doing well!
Can we make this viral?
Amazingly written mash Allah
As the mother of an Eowyn (most often pronounced EE-oh-WIN or Owen by well meaning people) I can sympathize. This was a very well written article and like most posters I find myself repeatedly saying your name, hoping I’m getting it right.
Yes.
Oh, girl.
I had classrooms full of Armenian students, and it took me ages to get their names right, but dammit, names are important, and I wanted them to know I cared.
Your name is lovely.
Beautifully written. As a person who’s in love with someone who has a Slavic name that’s unfamiliar to most people he meets, I really appreciated this. I just linked to it in the comments section over at The Atlantic, under a humorous piece about interacting with Sharpie-wielding baristas at Starbucks – http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/… – here’s hoping it’ll entice folks to come this way and read your words.
Despite not having an exotic or hard to spell/pronounce name, I have bitter memories of new teachers and temporary subs calling me Caroline, obviously not truly looking at the piece of paper in front of them. I had so much bitterness towards the mispronunciation of my name that in 6th grade I started to go by Carrie, easy to say and the most common spelling, and it took me until I graduated from high school and got into college to embrace my name again. I find my name to be beautiful, and have thankfully never had to feel hatred towards the name itself, simply the people who cannot see it for what it is.
I will also share a story I though of while reading this. At my work place there was a new girl who I make quick friends with. She was Arabic, and had a beautiful name. I had nicknames for some of the other people I was close to at work, but never gave her one. One day she asked me why, and I told her that while I had though about it, I couldn’t think of a single nickname that could do her birth name justice, not to mention I loved hearing her name said, even from my own mouth.
Marvelous piece! mashaAllah
You have a beautiful name.
I’m Libyan too .. and i can relate to your story a lot! Especially the starbucks moments where i tell them ” just put Amy there!!”..My name is Amasi (pronounced Aah-ma-see) and it is a strugle to correct people all the time!
This was beautifully & heartbreakingly written. Thank you for this!
(Not to make light of anything, but I smiled because MY name is Tess! And I often get asked, “Taz? Like this [running motion]?”)
I love your name! It's beautiful, and I wish mine were as pretty.
Perhaps some people may understand if you associate it with the ice dancer, Tanith Belbin.
Such a lovely piece.
I have always tried to say and remember people's names the way they prefer – I don't always get it right, but I like to try.
When I was young, we had Indian neighbors. My mother asked the husband for his name, and he said 'you can call me Ray'. (It was the last syllable of his surname – his American co-workers couldn't be bothered to try.) And my mother grinned at him and said, 'that's not your name. I want to know YOUR name!' And he sheepishly told her his name – Subhash. Not at all difficult to pronounce, kind of fun, really!
(My mother knew the importance of names – her own first name was odd and difficult, her middle name was the name of a US state, but she went by an easier and prettier nickname of it – and her surname was….amusing. She knew what it was to constantly have to repeat or explain your name, but she always, *always* enjoyed it and had fun with it. She liked to see people's eyes light up when they 'got it'.)
I have always lived in a rather multicultural community – the wider community is relatively midwest white-bread, but I work for a *very* multicultural university, with people from over 80 countries. I have always had classmates and students with the most beautiful names, and I love trying to force my ear to hear the unfamiliar sounds, and force my tongue to say them correctly. It widens MY world, and makes for better friends.
Thank you for this piece.
assalamoalikum sister,
I have a little tip for anyone struggling with teachers that can’t pronounce your name. One of my high school teachers couldn’t pronounce my name. Considering that I had him in grade 9, grade 11 and finally in grade 12 he still couldn’t pronounce my name. So I decided that on every test of mine I will do this:
Name: Maham (Maa-hum)
And every test I gave him had my name written like it is spelled, and in brackets how you are suppose to pronounce it. He eventually got it, took time but he got it.
On now to your beautiful work of art, so much heart and so much reality reflected into one piece. Beautiful! I too have felt the same way, and even continue to. But you know what they’ll get my name right eventually, but I am gonna stick to it no matter what. And after all as you said: “On the radio I hear a story about a tribe in some remote, rural place that has no name for the color blue. They do not know what the color blue is. It has no name so it does not exist. It does not exist because it has no name.”
Sincerely,
Maham
Excellent work. May the meaning and beauty of names as special as your own be known to all.
Tasbeeh, Carry that name like a banner! It is your name. I grew up in a private christian school, yes all white not that it matters. What matters is the teachers that are ‘suppose’ to teach phonetics and don’t know their vowels and do not bother to hear the name even after it is pronounced for them. My last name is Macias, amongst a long list of Trotters, Smiths, Goodmans, Young, Johnson…I was Macias. Simple? Yes, of course. Think of Ma-see-us…EZ when you break it down.
It was brutalized from the time I was in second grade thru high school. Even after I had gone to the same school, with the same people for years!
My name became Matchias, Macinius, Mazius, you name it…and it was there.
We all know the difference between listening and hearing. I simply shake my head now and think poor souls! After marriage with a very easy name of Leaf, then a common law arrangement with another easy name Jeno ~~ I went back to my wonderful name of Macias! Thank you Pappa! Teachers, take the time…LEARN the students name IF your tongue does not twist in that direction…MAKE IT TWIST!! You want your students to learn correctly. So set the example!
I read this post a month ago and it didn’t affect me much right away.
But then I kept thinking about it and how much it actually reflected my own experiences. I kept thinking about it every day, every time I corrected someone saying my name wrong. Especially when they would apologize and I would say “I’m used to it”. I always say that but now I realize how sad it really makes me.
I gave up on a correct pronunciation a long time ago. Only my family has said it right in so long.
Today I walked home for an hour, in the dark, and said my name the right way. It’s been years. I got suddenly addicted to hearing and repeated on and on. I felt that I could without someone looking at me weird because it was dark and windy.
I missed my name.
As soon as I got home I scoured the net to find this post again. Took a while because I couldn’t remember your name. I so should have.
My name is Violeta. VIO make one smooth almost vibration of a sound like VYO all together, with a LEt with a heavy E, and AH like a breathe.
Thank you Tasbeeh.
I'm so sorry you've encountered so many lazy jerks! I've always loved my own name – Melanie – and even though I'm frequently called Melissa or Michelle, I still love the name I was given! I hope you have encountered enough people who DO try though!
This is absolutely gorgeous. Thank you.
As someone with a name described by others as ‘difficult’, ‘unusual’, ‘weird’, ‘wrong’… thank you so much for this. This was beautiful, and perfectly captured how I feel when someone bastardizes my name, regardless of how often I’ve corrected them. It’s frustrating in a way people with names that spell check doesn’t try to correct can’t appreciate. I loved when your math teacher said that people probably didn’t want to try: so accurate. Thank you for capturing this so eloquently.
I am not only burdened with the limitations of my American tongue, but with a Massachusetts accent as well. I have stumbled upon and mutilated many beautiful names in my 26 years of teaching. Always I ask if I am saying it right, but all too often, the students give up on me, showing resignation, a little bit of pity, and a sliver of appreciation at my attempts. Your words have inspired me to try that much harder and I intend to share your story when I do.
What I’d love to know is what your name means, what its roots are 🙂
I grew up “other” and often had my name stumbled over, my family’s name outing me, as if my appearance hadn’t already. Conversely, when I meet new friends with Chinese or Sri Lankan names, for example, I’ve often been told to use their English names instead. Some folks won’t give me a chance to say their birth name, which feels a little sad. I can understand the resignation, though, or even a desire to dispense with one’s given name. I’ve studied a number of languages, mastered a couple, and am pretty decent at sight-reading phonetics with which I’m unfamiliar.
I do get annoyed when ppl have names that are spelled in complete disregard of *any* phonetic convention, but that doesn’t give me permission to botch their name for lack of trying, or to suggest they let me call them by a different name that I like better…! Even if someone’s not got great skills with pronunciation, or reading in general, there’s no excuse not to try. I’m so sorry that you’ve had to suffer fools and bigots alike 🙁
My mother in law refuses my name. She has called me Candice for the last 14 years. My name is Candelaria. Very few have ever pronounced it correctly so I go by Candi.
This is so touching and poetic. I’m in love and I’m crying. I hope you write a book someday.
Honestly, calling this beautiful is an understatement. This piece hit me so hard, I don’t think I’ll ever forget it.
This is so beautiful. I can’t explain how it made me feel. Adwoa xo
Thank you for this. Thank you so much. Your name sounds beautiful when I run it through my head.
The morning I was born my father named me Jessica. It was the most dirt fucking common name at that time. 28 years later I found out that it was the most common baby name in the United States for the majority of the 1980s. No fucking imagination. No thought. My mother wanted to name me Katrina and he overrode her. Fucking Jessica. For the rest of my life my father would be an emotionally and occasionally physically abusive asshole. As soon as my brother was born, I took backseat to him. He got a name that had meaning, that had a history behind it, he was named for someone. I didn’t even have that luxury.
I knew it was dirt common. When I was in second grade, I tried to make everyone start calling me Jessi. I thought that was at least a little better. I got lectured and berated by my parents for making things harder on my teacher and never gave myself a nickname again.
When I was 11 I met the girl who would make my life hell for the next 3 years, and ultimately for the rest of my life. Her name was Jessica too. But she was actually beautiful. She looked like a Jessica. She wore her wealth on her shoulders in a Nike jacket and had what looked like a million friends. By the time the three years were up, I wanted to kill her. But most importantly, I loathed my name even more than I had before.
When I was 16 I had had enough. My parents had divorced, and my father had attacked me for it, and constantly drilled it into my head that I was the cause of the divorce, it was all my fault, I ruined his life. He disowned me numerous times. So I got my mother’s permission and financial blessing, went to court, and changed it.
I had invented a new name. A new string of syllables that would mean me. They had no meaning in English and just sounded good to my ears. Later in life, I would find out that it had meanings in other languages, and I would be embarrassed by my teenage haste, but I absolutely could not be Jessica anymore.
For the rest of my life, up to now and probably beyond, people would butcher this new name. They added i-sounds or changed all the vowels to a’s, or stuck an o in there somewhere. When I tried going to sorority rush, they totally gave up trying to pronounce it and just called me Natasha. Jesus Christ. It is never ending. And once someone does know how to pronounce it, they say it over and over again, in weird ways, because “it sounds cool”. It does not sound cool. It sounds disrespectful and hateful.
I tried to change it when I got married, to another thing hastily thought up, but the law doesn’t work that way. So I am still carrying this remnant of my teenage years of terror and grief, but at least it’s mine.
Thank you for writing this Tasbeeh. It’s beautiful and means a lot to me. I wish we could someday meet, but the internet will have to suffice.
Thank you,
Metaka
Brilliant piece of literature! Well written and I sincerely commend you! 🙂
amazing.
Tess, You’re amazing!
I like the way you express things, so elegant and sophisticated !!
Proud to see Libyans expressing themselves that way.
this actually made me cry. everyone mispronounces my name, which is okay, because it’s hard, and sort of spelled illogically, but the worst part is when i correct them and tell them and they still dont do it right. like it’s not worth knowing. thank you for this.