The Name Game 

By Raveena Grover

At a restaurant the other week, a waitress asked what name to put my order under. 

‘Raveena,’ I said. 

‘Raveena...’ She repeated, ‘I’m just going to put it down as Riva.’ 

My friends and I looked at each other, bemused she’d managed to pronounce my name but not given spelling it a shot. It didn’t really bother me, but my friend Alia was shocked. 

‘I can’t believe that just happened… And from another person of colour, too,’ she said.  Admittedly, it was strange another person of colour hadn’t bothered to write my name down correctly, but we were in a busy restaurant — and more notably, this was in the Inner West of Sydney. Arguably the hub of white leftism. I honestly didn’t expect much, so I let it slide. 

A few years ago though, this wouldn’t have been the case. Thinking about that interaction and about writing this piece reminded me of the countless times my coffee cup or takeaway order was spelt incorrectly; when emails from colleagues, clients and interviewees started off with ‘Hi Ravenna,’ or one particularly embarrassing case involving a high school substitute teacher pronouncing my name as ‘Rav-weiner.’ 

When I was younger, the misspellings and mispronunciations were funny, but in my late teens I began to view them as a racist crusade against us ‘ethnics’. How could others not bother to treat our names properly and with respect? 

So initially, my reaction at the restaurant shocked me. Why was I being so complacent at this blatant disrespect? Where was that painful sting I used to feel at 19? 

I realised then that mispronunciations, especially from people — white people — not close to me, or whom I rarely engaged with, didn’t matter. The anger I had felt in my teens had fizzled out in my 20’s into basic annoyance. There wasn’t any need for me to demand a rewrite or a correction, simply because I didn’t base my worth on ‘whiteness’ respecting me anymore. At least, not when it came to my name. It became healthier for me to channel my anger against structural, tangible discrimination. 

This isn’t to say constant mispronunciations and misspellings aren’t racist. They are. They can be exhausting, and when they happen constantly by people we engage with often, they can be dehumanising. 

For those of us with ‘ethnic’ names — i.e. names that divert from whiteness — our relationship with them is powerful. For each of us, this beautiful and complex relationship is different. What my name means to me, how I choose to give it respect and who I choose should respect it isn’t a blanket-feeling for whiteness to ascribe to, when it comes to others’ names — and certainly not when it comes to Indigenous peoples’ names. 

However, it’s pretty reasonable to assume there have been multiple instances in our lives when each of us wished we had simpler, anglicised names. Or instances where we have changed them, just to make it easier to order at restaurants or communicate with peers. 

Sometimes, even when friends shorten my name to Rav, I feel a pang of discomfort. Not so much at the act itself of shortening my name, but more so at the disappointment that my full name — this beautiful name my mother gifted me when I was born — isn’t being spoken like it deserves to be. 

When it comes to daily menial interactions with people I don’t know, I am more bewildered at whiteness’ inability to grasp phonetics. In fact, sometimes just to confuse them and cater to my amusement, I’ll make sure I pronounce my name the way it’s meant to be pronounced, Indian accent and all. As they reach for the pen to write your name, a look of panic will cross their eyes. Try it next time; it’ll add a spicy twist to your Starbucks order. 

The energy it takes to correct mispronunciations and misspellings after the umpteenth time uses just as much as the energy as it takes to absorb them and move on. So, often, the easiest way to handle microaggressions like these — speaking for no one but myself — is through humour. 

While doing field research (asking friends to DM to my insta story), I compiled a series of photos of miserable, funny, shocking stories about the spellings of our names. By no means do they define us or affect our names’ worth. But they do illuminate the extent to which whiteness ascribes to complacency and laziness and deters from what it finds unfamiliar. 

Here’s to my Microsoft-Word-red-line gang; I see you, and I raise my [rav]weiner to you.