One of the many challenges facing the global executive is the important task of pronouncing and spelling foreign names. Indians in the US do face some difficulty with American names – a strong Mallu accent can change a ‘John’ to a ‘Joan’ for instance – but in general they do fine. American first names are designed to be simple. The ones that aren’t, are mercilessly shortened to nicknames. I know many Tims, but no Timothys.
Americans pronouncing Indian names is an entirely different matter. Americans have never developed the mouthparts to be able to say Jagadeesan Radhakrishnan, or Sabyasachi Mukhopadhyaya. They may be called Radha and Tublu by friends and family. But Radha and Tublu will not put those names on their business cards. It is not in us Indians to shorten our names or make them easier for the Americans. Our business cards and email display names will always carry our names in full glory and we will grant the right to use our shorter names only selectively to Americans who have earned the right to it.
There are many situations where this philosophy does not work well. One, if you have an American boss. Two, if you are in Sales. If you have an American boss, he or she will decide on the first day of your employment what to call you. You can tell him right away, that you would like to be called Radha, or you can let him decide to call you ‘Jags’. To make matters worse, Americans cannot fathom the South Indian framework of (your name, father’s name, village name) in various permutations. So it is best to go in prepared with a proposal on what you would like to be called.
The other situation, as I said, arises if you are in Sales or in any job that requires you to be in constant touch with people outside the company. Take my example. I have a pretty straightforward first name – Basab. It is pronounced baa-sub. It’s not a very common name outside of Bengal (my mother is Bengali) but it has the virtue of being short.
Unlike the other examples I gave, the Americans respond to my name differently, when we are meeting for the first time. Where they are tentative and tongue-twisted with a ‘Sabyasachi’, they are confident and almost relieved about a ‘Basab’. Here, they say, is an Indian name that I will conquer with absolutely no help. I can do this, they think, and then say out loud – “Bu-saab, how you doin?”
Since I was in Sales and more often than not, the American I was meeting was a client, I never corrected anybody on the pronunciation of my name. Some clients would figure it out, some clients wouldn’t. There emerged a strong correlation between clients who were giving me more business and clients who pronounced my name correctly. At one time, I had begun forecasting my pipeline solely based upon a simple but unorthodox heuristic – proposals to clients who could pronounce my name correctly had an 80% chance of converting to revenue. Others weren’t worth the paper they were printed on. This was a pretty neat heuristic. If this was indeed true, to improve my win rate, I just had to train my clients on how to pronounce my first name and the rest would take care of itself. My win rates would soar and I would become the star Sales guy in the team.
Unfortunately, I was mixing up cause and effect and soon decided to move on to another brand of snake oil to improve my win rates.
All things being equal, in Sales, you can be under a major handicap if the client is unsure about how your name is pronounced. A guy I know had the following email signature – Niraj (knee-rudge) Sharma. He was a top Sales rep at Infosys. Others have to take even stronger measures. There was a guy I had some business dealings with in New York, whose parents, in an inspired moment nearly half a century back in India, had named him Bhuleshwar Gandhi. In New York, when he wisely decided to change his name, he decided to not succumb to sentimental half-measures – he changed his name to Bill Grandee. I suspect that was a turning point in his career.
Back to me. Having muddled through my sales career in the US being called anything (or nothing, many people chose to just point) I am now completely inured to the pronunciation of my first name. I suspect that many of my Indian friends here now call me Bus-aab. It doesn’t matter to me any more. But at one time it did. Way back when, in a moment of despair that only a sales guy short on his quota will understand, I told my wife that I wanted to change my first name. ‘Bobby’ I said, ‘had a nice ring to it and was close enough to Basab’. She said that she had married a Basab and was not keen on widening the field to Bobbys and such like. I left it that.
But there is one place where I can stop being Basab and become someone else – at Starbucks. Where I can fling off my Clark Kent persona and become Bobby man. At Starbucks, they pride themselves in customizing your cup of caffeine to just the way you want it. Naturally, all parties are then interested in getting that personalized cup of coffee to the right person. Ergo, they ask for your name which they dutifully scrawl on the cup. The Barista then concocts your cup, screws up his eyes at the name written on the cup and loudly calls it out. A name like Basab can come out at the other end, totally unrecognizable even by its owner. After a few disasters with Basab, I just switched to Bobby. It’s a win-win. It helps the good people at Starbucks (excellent service, by the way) and lets me live my double life as Basab and Bobby.
So that’s my secret name and now you know it.
I have altered the names of all the people named in this post to preserve their anonymity. However, if they can still identify themselves, I hope they will forgive me in the name or art, or whatever.
6 am pacific 
Coincidently, for the first time, I played with my name. We just returned home after having dinner outside. My stomach is happy. Anyways, when we entered, the hostess informed us that the wait will be 10 minutes and asked for one of our names. Without without making the wait longer, i told her S – that’s it, just one alphabet. I really liked it when someone called — S, party of two.
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Nice one!!
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Very nice, Bobby Dazzler with a twist:-)
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Have started my career in business development. So starting to realise this. A nice article to start with
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Hi Basab,
Quite funny !! Can relate your article 🙂
I am in sales & based out of belgium.
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After they screamed ‘Prick’ at the local Starbucks when my drink was ready, I hastily changed it to something more generic the next time.
I just want to see what would they say if I said my name was Osama. Would they call it out loud?
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Nice one!
I was called Jirry, Jerry, Gary (Gary is my name ALWAYS, even if it clearly spell it as G-I-R-I, in Fuddruckers) till date.
Very recently i decided to switch gears to aggressive mode in self-name-pronuciation-preservation. Even in the middle of an important meeting/conf. call when someone mispronounces my name i start with “that’s GIRI, btw” and move on..
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not a shameless plug 🙂
it’s related to names..
click here to see my rencent post on Telugu names.
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nice one, though may name is as simpale as it can get I still face problems
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Did you consider “Boss” ? A trifle mafia sounding perhaps,but might have given a psychological edge :)!
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Great blog, Basab. One small correction – The top sales guy’s name is Knee-rudge Dubey , not sharma 🙂
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Hi Basab, Great peice.
I 0nce got asked ” Are you a man, and that’s why your name is “man”ish ?
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Although my name sounds pretty straightforward, I soon discovered that it could be mangled beyond recognition by midwestern twangs, southern drawls, and other regional American dialects. So I did what Siddharth above did – I just used my first initial, J. Of course, even that got changed – it was soon being spelled “Jay”….
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Sepia Mutiny had a recent discussion on Indian names – http://www.sepiamutiny.com/sepia/cgi-bin/mt/mt-mail-entry.cgi?entry_id=3930.
Being a Bong with a complicated name (not the usual Bong ones, but more vowels & consonants) I was used to seeing my name mangled in Delhi when I worked there. That’s when my daak naam, like Gogol in ‘The Namesake’, came to my rescue, & being of two syllables, I am happily using it in the US.
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There is a software called Sitepal available here http://www.oddcast.com/home/bloggers which converts text to voice. Input any Indian name and the results are hilarious.
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Hi! While I liked the whole stuff on the name and issues around it, funnily I have noticed in the US, there seems to be no overt exclamation pronouncing a 16 letter Slavic or East European name with some 15 consonants or a longer and varied Japanese name with more Ys and Os, it is only with the Indian names that there is celebrated comment and discussion, because most Indians themselves cant pronounce their neighbors’ names? Or is the comfort of Americans with Consonants and total rebellious discomfort with Vowels. . . I Rack, anyone? I Ran, did you?
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We have come across many Indian names which are sometimes tongue twisters and sometimes be just contrasting such as ‘Prakash Andhare’ or ‘Nahita Sharma’ shortened to ‘Nahi Sharma’. Sometime the American names can be funny and/or serious too. I still remember, my first day at a client site in IBM NY back in 1989. Someone took me to the managers cabin and I shook hand with him. He slowly whispered ‘Hav…. Coffey’. I immediately responded, ‘Thanks a lot, but I just had Tea’. He had a puzzled look on his face. When I left his room and looked back, there was a name plate which said ‘Hall Coffey’ and even today, when I think of this incedence I cant’ stop laughing.
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Hi Basab,
Interesting one!!
In fact I was quite surprised to know that there are organisations where yardstick (well one of the yardsticks!!) of one’s “achievement” is having a crunched pet name in his e-mail id. And mind ya, such privileges are allowed only from a Vice President (or equivalent) designations!!
For eg a Subramaniam Venkatakrishnan becomes Manny!!
But of course crunching of names is nothing new to us. I, who thought has the shortest name around was rechristened “Tups” and “Tupsie” (which is longer in fact!!)over the years by friends and colleagues….all in a day’s work, i suppose.
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Basab, I guess it was Knee-rudge Dubey…his is the unique e-mail signatures I have seen.
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For me, nobody can pronounce my name right. From the creche incharge who pronounced it worse than I did at that time as a toddler to friends now who choose my official pet name over the official formal name!
I guess names like mine do not stand a chance in the flat world.
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I am into journalism…and more often than not my name turns to Amy!
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I’ve been hunting, without success, for a site that will translate common names (maybe by ethnicity) into their phonetic spellings. It would be very cool if it could take the name in the script of origin (e.g. Devanagari).
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In my case i have found most indians pronouncing my name incorrectly (Shree-jan)whereas most foreigners pronouncing it correctly (though with a slight accent).funny but true…
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Nice article same thing here. My name is Shoban[show-bun] Kumar[koo-mar].. My uk counterparts call me SHOW-BAN Q-MAAR 🙂
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Heh interesting.
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So funny!!
When you are speaking, any name is hard to hear the first time if it is new and most people don't have the confidence to ask you to repeat. When you are writing, I've noticed that Indians using Roman alphabet to write Indian words use an "a" when Americans would use a "u". This might be part of the confusion if people see your name then pronounce it wrong. "Basub" would get you a correct pronunciation. I'm not suggesting you change the spelling of your name, by the way! Just trying to help think of why there might be so much confusion. "Niraj" is another example of this problem with a and u. It is written "raj" (with an A) so Americans will not say "rudge" unless he directs them to. The name "Mamta" is a good example of someone I know. I'd pronounce this "mom-ta" or "ma'am-ta" but the pronunciation is "mum-ta". "Barfi" is another example. When I see "barfi" think "barf – ee" and not "burf-ee".
The other problem is the strong pronunciation on both syllables. Americans (I don't know about Brits) usually have lazy second syllables. Think of words ending in "y" in English. For example: "lucky" or "funny". The second syllable is soft. We don't say "luck- key" or "fun-knee". It's more like "luck -ee" and "fun- ee". In English it doesn't really matter, but with Hindi it does. "Roti" is "Rote-tee" but when an American says it, it sounds like "roady" because of this second syllable laziness. Likewise the name "Radha" in your example becomes "radda" and "Preity" becomes "preedy" and "Aditi" becomes "Adiddy". See what I mean? lol
I think it is because there are so many more sounds in Hindi. I don't know about other Indian languages, but Hindi have alphabets that are entirely indistinguishable to English speakers. All those aspirated and unaspirated consonants sound exactly the same to English ears. So when you over-pronounce English words in a typical Indian accent, it sounds enunciated and sing-songy but easy to understand. When we underpronounce Hindi words, you have no idea what we are saying even though when you correct us it sounds the exact same to our ears! lol
Nothing to do about it but have a sense of humor like you have!
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Lola,
Thank you for stopping by the blog and your comments. All of them were very interesting. Hearing it from an American in India is especially nice for 6AMPacific.
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Dropped-in here from your latest post on the blog. This was hilarious!
reminder to self – Must go through all your old posts when time permits 🙂
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