The Problems Of Growing Up With A ‘Difficult’ Indian Name (In A Foreign Land)

Title 2: You Talking To Me? How To Deal With The World Mispronouncing Your Name

Title 3: Hello, My Name is Whatsthepointyou'regoingtosayitwronganyway

The etymology of my first name, Arun, would likely be a source of amusement to my friends if they knew about its earlybird associations:

अरुण - Arun - (/ah-roon/): is a male given name given among Hindus and Cambodians. The name is derived from the Sanskrit name for Aruna – the Hindu charioteer of light who drives the solar deity Surya across the sky. The name connotes the following meanings – Dawn; Sun; Reddish Morning Glow.

Not one for waking up early, and more likely to see sunrise after a long night of inebriation, I’ve never quite lived up to the bright, cosmic bursts of morning energy my name connotes. Luckily, then, not many of my potentially-amused friends know my real name. Excepting my mother, sister and estranged father, few people actually do.
Since about the age of 9 or 10, I have introduced myself as (/ah-rin/) – “like the island”. The isle of Arran, which in a (my) Scottish accent is pronounced with an elongated rolling ‘r’ (/ah-rrrrin/), lies just off the West Coast of mainland Scotland, the country where I was born and raised by a West-Highland mother and North Indian, Hindu father who emigrated to Glasgow in the 1970s. Since my elder sister, Ashley, had been given a ‘Western’ name, my parents decided, in 1985, on an Indian appellation for their second and last child. Apparently, “Ashoka” and “Rageev” were briefly touted before “Arun” was decided upon, chiefly for its assimilative qualities. In a country famed for accentual “Rrrrs” and “Aaahhs”, in addition to the closely named isle of Arran, (/ah-roon/) was surely the best, or at least most diplomatic, choice.

Perhaps not. When I started school aged 5, my primary teacher, Mrs. Davidson, plump, bespectacled and of strong Aberdonian accent, urged classmates to call me (/Uh-rhoona/) in a well-intentioned but utterly failed attempt to pronounce a name which, as my parents had tried to explain repeatedly, had an “unusual inflection” since it was “an Indian name”. Needless to say, she never did quite grasp that “unusual inflection”, or perhaps exerted herself in making it a little too unusual. For five years, then, the name I went by in school (/Uh-rhoona/) was different to the one I to responded to at home (/Ah-roon/). To complicate matters further, when I moved towns at the age of ten after my parents’ divorce, I began to introduce myself - in a third variation - as (/ah-rin/), “like the Scottish island, only spelt differently”.

“Oh that’s an unusual spelling”, some teachers remarked. “Yup”, I nodded, without further explanation. Though Freud would probably tell me (*groan*) that my subconscious slip into outright Scottish pronunciation was symptomatic of my growing estrangement with father, it was, quite simply, a less time-consuming approach and easier to explain. It also saved young peers the hassle of trying to grapple with an unfamiliar name they had never seen or heard before. No tiresome litany required, other than (/ah-rin/), “like the island”. Easy. And so I became (/ah-rin/) in public, and (/ah-roon/) at home.

As a tutor of English Literature, I’m well aware of the now-clichéd idea that nomenclature can be fluid (roses will forever smell as sweet), which begs the deeper question: Do these self-indulgent observations matter to anyone beyond myself (however that self might be called)? After listening to a recent NPR podcast about Americans with ‘foreign’ or ‘difficult-to-pronounce’ names, I realised (quite astonishingly for the first time) that my experience is common among people who grow up as part of more than one culture in Anglophone countries. The fact it took me this long to notice this bicultural kinship is, in itself, revealing of the extent to which those of us with ‘foreign’ or ‘difficult’ names usually take passive or submissive attitudes towards experiences of mispronunciation. There is often a weary apprehension towards being, well, a ‘difficult’ nuisance. Throw other aspects of personal identity into the mix such as gender, cultural guilt and class, and the complexities mount further.

Indian-American standup Aparna Nancherla has pointed out, for example, how hard it can be for a young brown woman to correct a white male colleague when he mispronounces her name, and similarly, it’s not easy for anyone – regardless of gender – to insist upon (re)pronunciation when dealing with someone of higher economic status, class or social standing. Recent studies have even revealed that ‘difficult’ names can have an impact on employability, and I’m certainly not the only bicultural individual who feels some degree of guilt for ‘privileging’ one culture over another through choice or assimilation: “(/ah-rin/), like the SCOTTISH island”.
All that said, from a purely personal point of view, I’m quite happy to be variously called (/ah-rin/) and (/ah-roon/) by different parties. The duplicity of self is, for me, a pleasant reminder of two sides of my mixed cultural heritage. And, through my increasingly middle-aged routine of sleeping and rising early, I’ve even begun to witness more red- morning dawns. I continue to grow, it seems, into the name(s) I’ve always had.

But that shouldn’t take away from the very real aforementioned issues surrounding ‘difficult’, ‘foreign’ or ambiguous names. Which is why we should never hesitate to say those simple few words: “Am I saying your name correctly?”.

Words: Arun Sood