It is some of the most random moments that bring about realizations sometimes.  Life works like that, lessons in unexpected places.  It makes them no less profound, sometimes just a little more surprising.  I had a conversation with some newer acquaintances the other night and I heard them pronounce their last name for the first time.  I’ve known these people for some time now but I hadn’t really taken the time to get to know them, mainly due to time and the timing of events—so I’d never really been introduced properly and only heard their names said from other people.  When they said it in front of me, I took the time to ask them if that was how it was supposed to be said because I’d only ever heard it what was apparently the wrong way.  They responded with saying it doesn’t matter, just say it how you want to.  To that I told them, no, if that’s how you say your name that’s how it needs to be said.  Our names are more than just what we are called, they are how we identify ourselves and how we interact with the world.  Our names are ours and that is the representation of our identity to the world—it should matter how it is said. 

Language is a funny thing because it is both irrelevant and important on so many levels.  The words we use, the way we use them, when we use them all impact our understanding yet, at the end of the day, they are just words.  The understanding comes from us.  It matters what we allow people to call us.  Shakespeare said, “That which we would call a rose by any other word would smell as sweet?” Sure, Juliet is a love struck hormonal kid, but the truth is still there—we know a rose as a rose and all that comes with it.  The same is for our name.  The words we use to label ourselves come with equally important connotations.  Blind Melon’s No Rain touched this as well—the video depicting a girl looking for where she fits in.  She’s rejected from every place she goes for being herself until she finds the field full of people dressed as bees.  Now, there was no real insinuation that the girl thought she was a bee, it was the freedom of finding people who understood her passion.  Sometimes we just need to find the right place to find ourselves and that means finding ourselves and where we know we belong.  We are born with the knowledge of who we are, it is only our habits and training that try to tell us we should be something or someone else.  I had previously been taught to not hurt someone’s feelings by correcting them on how they say things, even names.  It never felt right hearing my name wrong.

Now that I’m older, I know every time I hear someone pronounce my name wrong, I correct them.  When they call me some version of my first name that I don’t like, or if they use a more familiar name/nickname and we don’t have that relationship, even if we do know each other and we are in a different setting where anything other than my real name is used, I make sure to correct them.  I have a friend who refuses to use their first name—they only use part of it.  The connotation of their full name hurts them and makes them feel different about who they are and triggers painful memories.  A name is different than how we feel about ourselves and who we think we are—a name is literally who we are.  Details matter.  Mispronouncing a word can change the entire meaning of the word.  So too can the name we call ourselves change who we are.  When we are beyond the process of trying to figure out who we are, we know our name. So don’t be afraid to tell someone when they said your name wrong.  People who get offended at being corrected are working through a different issue so let them be upset.  That doesn’t change anything about who we are. Tell them how to say your name.