Over the past few years, I have gotten to know quite a few people who have moved to the U.S. from South Asia. Without exception, I find them to be outstanding people, friendly, kind, hardworking, and intelligent. Nevertheless, there is a problem - it’s not their problem - it’s mine.
Well, since you asked, I’ll tell you!
For the life of me - I CANNOT PRONOUNCE MANY SOUTH ASIA NAMES! When I’m introduced to someone from India or Pakistan or Sri Lanka - the names are completely incomprehensible to me.
Hey! In my defense, I grew up with people named Rich, Pat, Bob, Joe, Jim, and Ron! Monosyllabic names. Uni-vowel names. Simple names! Understandable names!
South Asian names have a minimum of 25 vowels and syllables!! I’m sorry - it’s not my fault! There are just too many vowels and syllables to store in my short-term memory long enough to comprehend before I pass it over to my long-term memory!
As my speech therapist is my witness - I have tried!
During a recent tennis match, I played a young man from India. When I met him, I stuck out my hand and said, “Hi. How are you? I’m Ken.“ He said, “Hi. I’m Abhayananda.” With a blank stare, I thought to myself, “Not even gunna try.” After a second, I smiled and said, “Good luck homie!“
South Asian names are not only challenging to pronounce, they are also occasionally humorous when placed in a Western European culture. Of course, I do realize they might also my find humor in my last name - Hand. That’s okay, it’s all in good fun. As I was saying, sometimes South Asian names can be humorous in our culture.
For instance, recently I was on a project team with several people, including a computer programmer born and raised in India. We had never met. He was simply a voice with a name on a weekly conference call. The proper spelling of his name is unclear to me, but phonetically it is spelled Dipshit.
A typical conference call started out “Who’s on the call?“ “Ken is here.” “Bob’s here.” “Joe is here.” “Dipshit is here.” On one occasion he was late for a call. When he didn’t announce himself during roll-call, the leader asked, “Are you on the call Dipshit? Dipshit, are you there?” He then said, “Let’s wait for Dipshit before we start the call.”
Yesterday, I conducted a call with two leaders from one of our subsidiaries. One guy was named Eric Jones. The other one was Pisipati Sandeep. Pisipati was his first name according to his listing in MS Outlook. Since I never heard either name before - there was a 50/50 chance I was correct.
As a 10-year-old child, I teased my sister Christine by calling her Chrissy Pissy. So when I saw his name, Pisipati, there was a bit of unease, and I had flashbacks to my Chrissy Pissy days. Without a South Asian confidant, there were limited options to confirm or reject my first name assumption - I decided to forge ahead with Pissy-Patty?
When the call began, I introduced myself and asked, “Do I pronounce your name, Pissy Patti?” “No. My last name is Pi-sip-a-tee, my first name is Sandeep.” Was he upset with me for butchering his name? No. I don’t believe so. If he was, he showed class for not making me feel awkward.
I am officially and preemptively asking for forgiveness from all my current and future South Asian friends and acquaintances for the name butchering I will commit in the future. Please don’t be offended by how I mispronounce your name - I mean no disrespect!
If you would be so kind, do you mind if I call you by your initials? It might save us both a lot of embarrassment.
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