No, Mispronouncing Names Isn’t ‘Casually Racist’

My surname is Haworth and, for my entire life, people have mispronounced it. “Hayworth,” “Whore-worth,” “Hanworth,” “Hanward,” “Hoe-earth.”

And those are just the examples that even slightly resemble the actual pronunciation: “How-earth.”

Yes, I understand that it’s not obvious. “Whore-worth,” for example, is an understandable interpretation which I try and correct as quickly as possible for obvious reasons.

The reason it’s not obviously pronounced “How-earth” is because our language doesn’t always portray the precise pronunciation of words, and particularly names.

When someone says my name incorrectly — which happens on an almost daily basis — I know that it’s not a big deal. The vast majority of people say it correctly when they find out how to say it correctly, and it’s obvious that their initial mistake was honest, rather than motivated by an underlying hatred for me — as a person — or “my kind,” whether that be males, white males, white British males, or white British Jewish males.

How do I know this? Because I am an adult who isn’t in constant search of opportunities for victimhood.

However, there are others among us who are in constant search of opportunities for victimhood. Earlier this month, for example, Ashley Lee wrote a column for the LA Times titled, “The casual racism of mispronouncing an Asian person’s name.”

“Mispronouncing someone’s name, accidentally or on purpose, at the very least demonstrates a selective laziness to learn the correct way to address or acknowledge a person. The name is perceived as particularly difficult only because it’s beyond the white European names that have been deemed normal,” Lee wrote. 

This is far from a unique argument. Yewande Biala wrote for the Independent, “‘My name is Yewande’: Mispronouncing or changing people’s names is just another form of racism” in January 2021, while David Lightman wrote for the Sacramento Bee, “When is it racist to mispronounce Kamala Harris’ name?”

Social interaction is laced with the risk of causing offense, even in a homogenous region in which every citizen shares the same politics, culture, language and religion. Mix this up with a few different languages, dialects, and customs, and you’ve got a potential disaster on your hands…if you are looking for disaster.

Instead, why don’t we just calm down? “Yewande Biala” is a complicated name, presumably originating in the words of a different language. “Kamala” has multiple pronunciations, much like Haworth, and given that Joe Biden himself routinely uses different versions, is it a surprise that people “get it wrong?”

Instead, let’s not assume the worst in people by drenching every possible interaction with a layer of bigotry. 

Or, at the very least, perhaps you can explain how I should deal with people when they call me “Ian Whore-worth,” because maybe politely correcting them and happily getting on with my day is the wrong choice?

Ian Haworth is an Editor and Writer for The Daily Wire. Follow him on Twitter at @ighaworth.

The views expressed in this piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

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