Getting a Name Right
I have a co-worker whose name is frequently mispronounced by others. This co-worker has included the correct pronunciation in their Slack bio, and I’ve heard them say their name, so I’m confident I know how it should be pronounced. Despite this, people across various teams — and even on our own team — often get it wrong. What troubles me is that my co-worker never corrects anyone during meetings or calls, and I can’t help but feel upset on their behalf. I want to address the issue because I believe we should strive to call everyone by the correct name/pronunciation, but I’m unsure if it’s my place to intervene or how to approach this without overstepping. Would it be inappropriate for me to privately reach out to those mispronouncing their name to gently correct them? Or should I let my co-worker decide how to handle it?
— Name-Conscious Colleague
This is tough. Names can be hard to pronounce for a variety of reasons. The name sounds “foreign” or is uncommon. The name reads as one thing but sounds like another. The name is ambiguous, or pronunciation could go any number of ways. (“Anna,” which is a name common in a variety of languages, from Spanish to Italian to Russian, falls into this category.)
But continued mispronunciation of someone’s name can say a lot about a person. It suggests a lack of attention to detail. A failure to listen. Faulty memory. Or, at worst, purposeful disrespect. (Remember how Donald Trump and other Republicans insisted on mispronouncing Kamala Harris’s first name during the recent presidential campaign?)
We hear our names spoken aloud so rarely that when we do, we want others to get it right. A guy I dated recently confessed that because he’d never said my name out loud that he didn’t know how to pronounce it. Even though I don’t much care if people refer to me as “AN-na” (the correct pronunciation) or “AH-na,” I thought his self-intervention was charming, and thoughtful.
For some people, though, mispronunciation of their name is a lifelong irritation. I started a job a few years ago where one of the top execs had a name that “read” as one thing but was actually pronounced slightly differently. When I made the mistake of mispronouncing her name during an introductory meeting, she was quick to correct me (somewhat sharply, I might add). But I understood her position. She probably has to issue corrections a lot, and the confident way in which I pronounced — or in this case mispronounced — her name probably rankled.
But back to your colleague and whether you should intervene. I don’t think you should. Instead, I think you can simply educate others by continuing to show, not tell — that is, by pronouncing your colleague’s name correctly in front of others. Just don’t reach out privately to co-workers — that might come across as patronizing or put them on the defensive. Be confident that your co-worker is dealing with it the best way they know how to right now, and let them decide how to deal with it in the future. And that just might be saying nothing.