Say It Again, Slowly Please

I can tell you exactly when it was that I realized that every single citizen of the United States had been to therapy (hooray for us all!) It took place at noon one hot August day in the West Side Market in seaside Cape May, New Jersey. Standing in line for a sub (a "hoagie," in Jersey parlance) with Philly style cold cuts and Jersey tomatoes, I was witness to a conversation between two teenagers, one male, one female. With my usual adroitness at figuring out the subtle nuances of a conversation, I discerned that the young man wished to see the young woman outside of work, away from the wistful vista of Taylor Pork Roll, potato salad, and Funyuns. She had apparently mulled over his offer and declined it; unwilling to bow out gracefully, he persisted, and soon she said the words that have been the death knell of young swains since Olivia dumped Orsino in "Twelfth Night;" "Forget it, already!"

I know I took the long way around to get to the point, but here it is: I knew the young man was no stranger to the counseling couch when he said, "I'm not going to let you marginalize me!"

Good for him, good for her, and good for Maitreyi Ramakrishnan, the 19-year old actress who plays Devi on the Netflix series "Never Have I Ever."

Devi is conflicted in lots of ways: she is an immigrant, and an outsider in her school in Southern California, and her father died suddenly the year before. Add that to the usual amount of teenage trauma, and Devi is dealing with a lot. You watch the show, you root for her, because she has the right stuff.

The picture shows the actress with
a bowl haircut as a kid!

So,  Maitreyi went on Twitter the other day to do something that I don't think someone in her shoes would have done in the past: she wants people to say her name correctly.

We all know people whose names are hard to pronounce, and there is nothing more marginalizing than having people mispronounce a name, whether it's because they don't know how to say it right (LEARN, dammit!) or because they just don't give a flip (STOP being that way!)

Long before the current self-improvement movement began, a fellow named Dale Carnegie wrote a book called "How To Win Friends And Influence People." It's been reasonably popular, selling 30 million copies over the years, even more than the beloved "Trump: The Art Of The Deal," which is generally regarded as the most wonderful book since the Bible (and both of them can be autographed by the author of "Trump..."!) 

One of the basics that Carnegie taught was, "There is no sweeter sound to one's ear than the sound of his name.” Maitreyi's point is that, like so many in her situation, she allowed people to butcher her name, but please, no longer: "I’m asking for basic respect when I want people to say my name right."

She chose a good time to make this statement. Season 2 of her show just came out, and so she is getting lots of publicity, and that's a good time to clear up the mispronunciation!

She said, "Names are so important, and I find that it’s a big part of your identity — it personally is for me. I love my name so, so much. And constantly I get people saying, 'Oh, you don’t even know how to say your own name right.' It’s like, 'No, no, no, I do. I do know how to say my own name right.'" 

She went on, "Because reality is, no one knows how to say someone else’s name except for the person themselves, you know? Like, this is my name. I’m sorry, but I get to call the shots here. There is one answer and that answer is my own. There’s no discussion for that."

And she used to accept it, but now... "So personally, when I was younger, I used to tell people, 'Yeah, you can call me My-tree like whatever, I don’t care,' because I used to think I was inconveniencing them, but I’m not. I’m asking for basic respect when I want people to say my name right, as many of us do, right? Like, we just want our names to be right."

"We don’t want it to be butchered, but sometimes we just, you know, accept it, which really, really sucks. And I hope you guys don’t have to go through that too often."

And she concludes, whimsically, "But nowadays, being my great, wise, 19-year-old self, I ask people to say my name correctly and I put a lot of active effort whenever it’s like an interview, or, you know, just meeting people in general, like new people. I make sure that they say my name right."

The Orioles' Anthony Santander came to us from Isla Margarita, Venezuela, and down there, people know that his last name is sahn-tahn-DARE. For the first year or so that he was here in Baltimore, he must have heard himself called sanTANduhr enough times that he made a plea, which all but the most obtuse and obdurate have heard and followed, that we say his name correctly. It's not too much to ask, is it?

You can go to Twitter to hear Maitreyi explain her point and demonstrate saying her name: "Yeah, I like to pronounce my name...My-tray-yee Ra-ma-krish-nin."

As Maitreyi says, "Names have power."  Let's give everyone their share of it.