Written By: Reshmi Dasgupta
News18.com
Last Updated: July 28, 2024, 19:32 IST
New Delhi, India
Western pronunciations often stress on second and third syllables, whereas such conventions don’t exist in the east.(Image: Reuters)
What’s in a name, you might ask. Not much, unless it happens to be Kamala and its election season in the US. In fact, before she became internationally famous, she might have heard herself being referred to as Kamala Harish—an eminently Tamil sounding name—in India. But in a country like the US where names in public life trace their roots to all parts of the globe, how they are pronounced should not matter. Much less be cited as proof of racist ‘othering’.
After all, how many people knew how to enunciate Zbigniew Brzezinski back in the 1960s and 1970s when he was a key figure in US policy making? Maybe Americans got to know the correct pronunciation once they heard it being rattled off by properly prepped TV anchors. But most of the rest of the world (barring perhaps Poland, where he was born) did not. Including Indians. If desis stumbled over his Z-category name, it was not because they were being racist.
Western pronunciations often stress on second and third syllables, whereas such conventions don’t exist in the east. That leads to predictable errors. Those named, say, Nigella, Camilla, Barack or Denzel may not have been very happy with how Indians (at least in India) pronounced their names........