Muhammed Ali knew the importance of a name. Journalists know how sensitive people are to having their name spelt correctly. News readers are given advice on the correct pronunciation of an important person’s name. Yet the English seem to have a problem with names.
A friend married and changed her name to Gazdar. As she said not hard to pronounce and spelt the way it sounds but she was irritated by the frequency she was asked to repeat it and spell it. Unfamiliar, by which I mean non Anglo Saxon, names habitually get this response. Of course sometimes it is perfectly reasonable to ask” how are you spelling that?”. If I am dealing with a call centre or making an appointment with my GP the receptionist will ask if I am spelling my name Ma or M small c.and my brother who is called Ewen knows there are lots of different spellings of his name so it’s reasonable to be asked. But I would not respond well to being called “ Mac” nor can I imagine my welsh colleague would welcome being referred to as “Taffy” or someone from Ireland being referred to as “Paddy”.
The attitude to foreign sounding names be they Easter European, Asian or African is often “oh I will never remember that “. In the work place this can lead to people names being anglicised to something easier to say or even changed completely as in ”oh we just call him Polish Pete it easier and he ‘s ok about it”. Is he? Funny then that even those who are not football fans seem to be about to say Roman Abranovich and Sven-Goran Ericksson and no one seems to have difficulty with Japanese cars called Nissan, Toyota and Mitsubishi.
If you are a famous footballer, super rich or a powerful politician we learn how to spell and pronounce your name correctly so if we are not prepared to do this with someone we work with we are saying we can’t be bothered because they’re not important.
Blair McPherson is author of An Elephant in the Room-an equality and diversity training manual published by www.russellhouse.co.uk