agonyaunt | Care & Feeding: My Daughter’s Boyfriend Can’t Pronounce Her Name

So instead he just calls her 'Sara'

My 21-year-old daughter is a beautiful, smart, and funny half-Black half-white young lady. She also has a very unique name that I can’t share for obvious reasons, but it’s an ethnic name from my husband’s home country. It can be a difficult name to pronounce if you’ve never seen it before, but once you’ve heard it a few times, it simply rolls off the tongue. So here’s the problem. She broke up with her longtime boyfriend and started dating a new guy last month and she really likes him, but I overheard him call my daughter “Sara.” When I confronted my daughter about it, she said that he does it because her name is too difficult for him to pronounce, so he decided to give her a nickname that starts with “S” as her real name does. Just to be clear, her real name sounds nothing like Sara, it just starts with the same letter. She doesn’t think it’s a big deal, but I’m completely outraged by this. Am I wrong? If I’m not wrong, how can I get it through to her that it’s disrespectful? Her new boyfriend is white, and I’m worried this is some sort of fetishization thing.

—Say It’s Not Sara

Dear Say It’s Not Sara,

This one hits close to home for me because I also have a difficult-to-pronounce name from my dad’s home country. The big difference is that it would be a cold day in hell before I allowed someone to call me “Doug” because it made life easier for them.

Although I have my assumptions, I’m not going to comment on whether he’s dating your daughter because of some creepy fetish; but I will certainly offer my opinion about his character. Very few things in life are more personal to humans than our names, and if her boyfriend won’t exert a ridiculously minimal amount of effort to learn your daughter’s name, it’s obvious that he doesn’t respect her.

I think it’s time to calmly sit your daughter down for an honest and serious conversation about your concerns. I would ask your daughter: If he’s unwilling to learn her name, then what makes her think he’ll love her and emotionally support her? Would she ever consider making up a name for any of her friends? What would her friends say if they found out about her boyfriend’s behavior? It is Level 10 disrespectful for him to behave this way toward her.

I would gently but firmly urge her to get on board with the idea that unless he starts calling her by her name, the relationship can’t continue. And I don’t think it’s too much for you to show your support for your daughter by letting her know that if he’s going to call her Sara, this guy is not welcome in your home. Hopefully she’ll snap out of it (show her this column if you need to), but this absolutely needs to stop.

More importantly, there must be some sort of a self-esteem issue going on here if she’s allowing this to happen in the first place. Perhaps the breakup with her longtime boyfriend made her question her worthiness, and that could be the root cause of the problem. You used a lot of accolades to describe her in your letter. Remind her of how amazing she is and that she should never settle for less than the best. Pronouncing her name correctly should be a given for anyone who decides to be in a relationship with her.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I'm honestly not sure about this one. And I say this as a Black woman who grew up in the US, under the cloud of its biases, with a non-Western name (albeit one whose phonemes are all found in English).

but.

Absent any other indications, I don't see enough evidence that Boyfriend is only dating not-Sara due to racial fetishism, and the reason I point it out is that saying so to not-Sara may have the opposite effect from intended. Boyfriend may simply be being lazy, sexist, and racist while dating not-Sara for herself (as much as is possible under those conditions, which isn't very much, alas). Absolutely if there's any other evidence, bring it up, but when pointing out his flaws I think there's room to be careful to not add any that don't exist. And/or, to carefully investigate if there is more evidence (after all, it took the second time someone wanted me for racially fetishistic reasons for me to recognize the pattern).

The caveat takes more time to outline than the main response, though, which in my case here is: I tend to be pretty restrictive about when a parent should let themself interfere in a young adult's relationship, but I think this may be such a case. Certainly, not-Sara could use to be told, and I desperately hope she hears, that she doesn't have to be repackaged and even renamed in order to be lovable. And I would definitely recommend she call Whole Man Disposal Services.

Except that as I wrote this I suddenly wondered what not-Sara thinks of her own name. (For the record, I love mine.)

Edited 2021-04-02 16:16 (UTC)

I am also curious whether Boyfriend has ever had a stutter, stammer or other speech issue that could be an innocent explanation for this

there are SO MANY words and names I struggle with due to a combination of

memory issues + auditory processing issues + trouble making certain mouth shapes[1]

It took me YEARS to get it right when I had two friends [both white] spelled Anna,

and one was pronounced ARRR - NA

and the other was pronounced ANN - A

& that was despite trying really really hard

And I am never going to be able to wrap my mouth around "dachshund" - after years of trying I have given up and started saying dash-hound.

[1] When I say that I have trouble making certain mouth shapes, context is that I regularly accidentally swallow my own saliva into my windpipe and have a coughing fit due to mouth-clumsiness whenever I am tired or distracted.

This is one of the reasons I like posting about these here. I had thought generally about phonemes and languages but not about specific people's abilities to pronounce various things.

Also the more I think about this the more I wonder what not-Sara thinks of her name and where "Sara" came from. Did she and Boyfriend pick it together? Or did he immediately roll his eyes at her name and say "that's weird, but I'd still date you. Let's call you something normal." I want to talk to not-Sara about this whole thing.

calls the Whole Man Disposal Service and has them wait around the corner while we see if they are needed

Yup. I could totally see LW concerns e.g. if not-Sara is up for this because she is worrying about her name being too much or something.

But on the other hand people get nicknames that aren't their names for sooooo many reasons. My real name is a pretty common one but during high school/university I answered to so many things that weren't my name because reasons (e.g. Jennifer - which was a common thing people called me instead of my name, a few other "mixed up with my name" names, a bunch of diminuitives that other people thought made sense, messaging board/IRC nicknames, and Gertrude - which is nothing like my name but which my English teacher decided to call me on the first day of class (named after the grammar character in our textbook, not Hamlet) which stuck around because I answered to it.

I am also way more curious about the deal with the daughter letting this happen (and hope she's "hearing she doesn't have to be repackaged and even renamed in order to be lovable") than decisive about the idea that a parent should actively try to interfere in this level of relationship issue.

>> Except that as I wrote this I suddenly wondered what not-Sara thinks of her own name. (For the record, I love mine.)

Yeah, my first reaction to this letter was: I was brought up to believe that making an effort to pronounce someone's proper name correctly is just basic respect. Especially if you're as close as an SO!

Except... I have now known several people (and read pieces by several more online) who point out that some people don't *want* you trying to do that, they would rather have the choice to just use a name that blends in, and save their hard-to-pronounce name for people who share the culture it's from. Especially in late teens/early twenties when people tend to experiment like that, it's possible that "Sara" *likes* him using a different name, or likes the idea of code-switching between two racial/cultural/national identities by choosing which name to use.

(There's all sorts of complicated stuff about *why* she might want that and so on, but it's not necessarily just about the boyfriend being lazy/entitled/racist. And Mom may not ever get the whole story. Also, I say all this as a person with the most whitebread, Anglo names imaginable, and literally nobody who is not related to me has ever pronounced my full name right on the first try. There are people I have known, and never felt deliberately disrespected by, for ten years, who still don't. I make the choice about who to correct and in what contexts on an ongoing daily basis. Americans being shitty at names isn't purely a racial thing, they're shitty at names in general.

...mind you, the only people who ever seem to feel bad about getting it wrong are bipoc. It's not *not* racialized. But in this case I suspect Boyfriend would be fucking up her name just as bad if she was white.)

My high school boyfriend (who was a miserable asshole for unrelated reasons) had an (uncommon in the States) Israeli name with a glottal in it, and also a mild speech impediment. When he went to college, he tried going by "Pete." I don't think he stuck with it, but I understand the urge.

Edited 2021-04-03 00:47 (UTC)

I have a double first name made of two basic Anglo whitebread names, but several of my British friends found the vowel combination caused by sticking them together awkward to pronounce.

I have a name that's fairly common in UK and US, in fact the same name, as written, as the spouse of my US friend, and they actually pronounce it differently, I discovered when I first visited them, and have also found with other N American acquaintances.

(This may possibly be a #VeryBritishProblem...)

Care & Feeding: My Daughter’s Boyfriend Can’t Pronounce Her Name

Remember how I mentioned that our identities affect our lives?

no subject

no subject

no subject

Re: Remember how I mentioned that our identities affect our lives?

Re: Remember how I mentioned that our identities affect our lives?

Re: Remember how I mentioned that our identities affect our lives?

Re: Remember how I mentioned that our identities affect our lives?

Re: Remember how I mentioned that our identities affect our lives?