Just as saying you feel "uncomfortable" around a person of color or someone wearing religious headgear is a microaggression, so is making fun of someone's name because you find it difficult to pronounce. It is likely easy to pronounce in that person's culture, just not for you. And they've probably heard a million jokes about it so are unlikely to find it funny. Therefore your "joke" provides humor to you and others who feel like you, at that person's expense.
Yes, you can legally change your name but it takes a lot of time and effort and could cause you a lot of grief with your family and professional confusion.
I’ve had many be unable to pronounce my last name and simply spell out the initial or fade into a mumble, is that a micro aggression? Mine is a simple last name to pronounce for native English speakers. Do I call these people microagressprs?
Wait, what? That's creepy.
Where do you shop? Also I would be pretty surprised if people did this was outside the US.
Having a conversation that goes "well I stepped on a foot by accident once does that make me satan?" is ridiculous.
Its really not that complicated guys.
It took me 45 minutes at the Births/Deaths/Marriages office. If I recall, it cost $60.
Relevant quote from Office Space
It's different everywhere and it's usually not easy.
https://sludgefeed.com/full-first-issue-diarrhea-times-natha...
And if I had gotten to choose the newspaper, I would have chosen one that is more friendly and more representative of the local community than the glorified blog operated out of another state that I was ordered to use
Often names will live on long after the family has left the culture. In my own case, my original family name was difficult for anyone in my own family to pronounce. Some number of generations ago (all records are lost so this is mostly an assumption) the name itself was Americanized so that the kids who never grew up in the original culture nor who knew the language could pronounce the culture.
>because people do not control their names, just as they don't control their physical features
This one also stands out to me because there are numerous physical features or other uncontrollable things which our society, to some level, tolerates judging or making fun of. Being short. Being bald. Having a disgraced member of society as a family member (someone who isn't just a criminal, but committed a crime that is harshly judged by society). None of it is fair, but it is still allowed to a large degree.
Even more complicated, when we get to personal relationships, judging based even on things like ethnic history is somewhat allowed. Part of me wonders, if I can judge someone I consider acceptable to pair bond with on some criteria, why can't I also use that exact same criteria as a source of humor? If I can't use it to do little things like make a joke, then it seems even more wrong to use it to make larger judgments of a person.
To be fair, most "English" names don't actually stem from the English language, they've just been thoroughly domesticated (Michael, for instance, or Schmidt).
"microaggression" doesn't mean malicious intent, it means one of an endless series of small unpleasant things that pile up over time to make an impact.
Once any name, culture, ethnicity, becomes large enough in size in a population then people will start learning how to pronounce their name and about their culture naturally. For cultures or ethnicities that are small in size in a country, then naturally people are gonna have a harder time, because they are not as exposed to those people. It would be a net negative in time for a whole population to learn about a small subsection of the population, because it would waste more time for the general population overall than is worth saved through hurt feelings and a feeling of being unwelcome.
Absolutely yes. Anything else would be rude.
> or pronounce my name perfectly?
Basic courtesy demands that they make their best effort.
> a net negative in time for a whole population to learn about a small subsection of the population
That's a strawman. No one's asking anyone to do a deep-dive on other cultures.
> it would waste more time for the general population overall than is worth saved through hurt feelings
I don't think good manners take that much time. Learning and remembering people's names is universal table stakes for interpersonal interaction. A polite society is its own reward - within reason, cost benefit analyses like that are kind of silly.
> Absolutely yes. Anything else would be rude.
It is not rude to poke fun or laugh at different cultures that are weird to you. Go to japan as a white person, and if you walk around a major city a lot of Japanese people will giggle at subtle things you do that are culturally different to what they are used to. Maybe I shouldn't have used the phrase "make fun of", but you get the point. Laughing at someone's name because it sounds weird is the same as laughing at jokes that poke fun at the stereotype that British people are very polite, it is difference in culture and weirdness that create humor that is perfectly fine and normal.
> Basic courtesy demands that they make their best effort.
I have never heard somebody not make any sort of effort to correctly pronounce someone's name. Very few people purposely want to mispronounce someone's name. This was not even the point of the argument either. The argument was whether it is disrespectful to mispronounce someone's name regardless of the effort put into trying to pronounce it. It is disrespectful to not put any effort into pronouncing someone's name, we are on the same page for that point.
> That's a strawman. No one's asking anyone to do a deep-dive on other cultures.
Pronouncing foreign name's is not some easy task. It takes time and research, and practice. Most people do not meet enough people who have those type of foreign names that can be practiced, to justify the time sink it takes to learn them.
> I don't think good manners take that much time. Learning and remembering people's names is universal table stakes for interpersonal interaction. A polite society is its own reward - within reason, cost benefit analyses like that are kind of silly.
They do when you have a country with a very diverse background of ethnicity and names like the United States has. Furthermore, Indian's represent a whopping 0.9% of the US population, immigrants when they represent such a small part of a nation should be the ones to lean into their new nation, not the other way around. Hell, their are white European names I mispronounce, it is not disrespectful by any means.
No if you don't know the person very well I think both things are rude. When you laugh at someone in their face, for their name or some other aspect of their culture, there are two possibilities:
1. They know why you're laughing and the joke is old for them, and not funny.
2. They don't know why you're laughing, and you've just made them very uncomfortable.
Degree of familiarity with the person matters. It's the same as if you're overweight, you wouldn't like strangers commenting on it. But people close to you are a different matter.
> a lot of Japanese people will giggle at subtle things you do that are culturally different to what they are used to
Also rude. It's not something I'd do (I hope) and I'd ask anyone I knew doing it to knock it off. Giggling and mocking isn't helpful either. Depending on how bad it is, how well you know the person, and how long they're staying, you may want to tell them (in private) what they're doing wrong so they can improve.
> it is difference in culture and weirdness that create humor that is perfectly fine and normal.
I don't disagree about that. I've seen comedians do funny bits on cultural quirks and differences. I don't think that type of humor works outside of people you know well, or in the abstract as comedians do. At the 1-on-1 level it just makes people uncomfortable.
> Pronouncing foreign name's is not some easy task. It takes time and research, and practice.
Are we talking about different things? I'm not suggesting someone sit down with baby name books from different cultures and learn all the pronunciations. Here's a sample script:
Person A: Hey, nice meeting you. I'm <foreign name>.
Person B: Hi <foreign name>. I'm <local name>. Did I pronounce your name right?
Person A: Almost. It's <repeats name, slower>.
Person B: <repeats name>. And how do you spell that?
Heck, I think that exchange would not be out of place at a Dale Carnegie training seminar. It'll help you remember the new person's name, and they'll feel nice that you made an effort. If they have a genuinely difficult name, like the apparently fictional "Nagheenanajar", they'll understand that you tried and that's enough.
> Indian's represent a whopping 0.9% of the US population, immigrants when they represent such a small part of a nation should be the ones to lean into their new nation, not the other way around.
Who said it should be the other way around? Knowing how to pronounce an Indian colleague's name and knowing about the origin of Diwali are different things. The first is something you should try to do for any human being. The second is 100% optional and only for people who are interested.
1. The character was originally written as Iranian, then rewritten to be Jordanian. He is not Indian. I don't see why the name would be easy in India. They hired an Indian actor to play him, which is probably the only questionable thing in all of this.
2. The name isn't a real name. You can try to search ناجحينانجر (Nagheenanajar), ناجحينانذر (Nagheenanadhar), ناجحين النذر (Nagheen al-Nadhar) or ناجحين النجر (Nagheen al-Najar) and see that you won't have much luck. At best it is a full name (both first and last) in and of itself. It's clearly written to be difficult to pronounce. I imagine the actor sat in a room and practiced for a couple of hours to be able to say it as easily as he did.
3. I'm from that region of the world, my first language is from that region of the world and I can tell you whole heartily that that name is extremely difficult to pronounce. I tried about four times and gave up. It's only when writing it in Arabic script that I was able to make sense of what I was reading. At best, the Latin spelling used is a butchering of the Arabic spelling.
Anybody with a name like that would know it's difficult to pronounce as well, I don't think they'd be upset - and I don't think they should have a right to suggest that others are being offensive when they have difficulties as well.
There are real applications when people are being dicks (some people would intentionally mispronounce my father's first name, which is pronounced as it reads and is four letters long..) but the Office Space name was intentionally made to be ridiculous.
The name is hard for them because it is foreign to them. To turn the name into a joke that they are 'never gonna work here anyway' explicitly links the racist prejudice against them to their name.
The name was probably especially ridiculous because they wanted to make the pun above, but the point is the racism surely, not the everyday humour in linking a foreign person's name to their non-employment?
Instead, realize its a joke about not being in the boys club because he's not like the leadership, he's different and yeah he has a silly name so fuck 'em.
He wasn't being fired for his name. Because he was being fired no one cared about his name. That's the joke.
Disagree. For a series of small, unpleasant, but otherwise unintentional, things, we have plenty of established words - including the very word "unpleasant". The term "microaggression" was created in order to enable blaming and condemning people at high enough granularity that a narrative of constant oppression could be established. Note how the word "aggression" absolutely does imply intent.
The way I see it, is its an unwanted highlighting of an ethnic difference, in a non-inclusive way.
The same way that unsolicited comments on certain physical features of is giving unwanted attention to those features. Especially if those features are a sensitive subject (e.g. part of the sexual dimorphism).
Of course you can do it when you have the other persons trust, or invitation.