NAME GAME

"Don't forget Chad Ocho Cinco"

I went to a local Mexican food place a few years back and ordered a meal. The pretty young server asked me what I wanted to drink and I saw they had Jarritos on the menu. If you've never had any of these, I recommend them to you, it's a brand of Mexican soft drink and they are very tasty. So I ordered one and she looked at me like I was a dull child and asked "Harrrrrrrrrreet-ose?" because I hadn't gotten the word exactly right for her region of Mexico. She didn't get a tip.

Some people are pretty silly about pronouncing words, they can go too far or be even arrogant and insulting about it. There was a skit on Saturday Night Live I remember well, it was the usual cast with Phil Hartman, Dana Carvey and so on, playing news broadcasters. They all were absurdly overpronouncing every remotely Spanish word, exaggerating each syllable. Bob Costas (pronounced Boab Coast-ahss) was there playing along, and Jimmy Smits who played a new guy on the team came in and said he was glad they were trying to be respectful of his language, but it was okay if they didn't try so hard. The whole effect was, to me, hilarious and effective. It was about the time period that newscasters were trying to pronouce Central American names and being ludicrously overmeticulous and enunciating with the tone of voice you usually hear only in Phonetics lessons.

How do you pronounce Judge Sotomayor's name? So-to-May-er? Or So-to-May-yore? A recent column by Dr Melissa Clouthier on Right Wing News tackled this, and she was critical of the second pronounciation:

The proper pronunciation is Soto-may-YOUR and with a opening of the mouth to get the proper fullness and roll of the tongue.

Sigh.

Remember when people Americanized their names? Partly, it made their names easier to say. Mostly, people just wanted to be American. Fully American.
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My uncle is of Mexican descent. He speaks Spanish and knows five dialects. When he speaks English it is not Spanglish. It's English. It is not English with the twang of Spanish hovering over him. I dare say, if I asked him if his Mexican heritage makes his judgment more stellar, he would say no. I'm quite sure he wouldn't say that being a man makes him smarter. And yet, he finds a way to integrate his Mexican heritage and embrace his history.

Generations of Americans have done this. They know the language of the old country. They keep certain traditions. But they were eager to be American. They were eager to Americanize their name, even. It was symbolic. It was a blessed gift to have this country and people were proud to be a part of it. A shortened name meant becoming new and American.
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America needs to continue to be a melting pot. I'm Melissa Clouthier. It is not Cloo-tee-ay. It is Cloth-ee-er. I'm American and proud of it.

Now I always figured it was the French pronunciation, but cloth-ee-er works for me too. I'm willing to respect what people want to be called after battling over 40 years trying to get people to stop calling me "Chris."

I get what she's saying, and to a certain degree, I understand and agree. The burning need of some folks (especially Hispanics, lately) to cling to their heritage and barely learn a lick of the language of their new home is not just insulting, it's stupid. If I moved to Mexico, I'd learn to speak like a native. Not like an American stumbling over Spanish, not with a heavy accent, and not part time while I spoke English at home. I'd speak the language of my new home. Because its home. I wouldn't have moved there if I didn't want to be part of this new country.

So yes, it is annoying to me when people cling to their old country so tightly they speak the old language at home and keep all the old decorations and eat only the old food and wear the old clothes and old customs and old culture. That's just stupid; why on earth did you move in the first place?

Yet at the same time there's something I disagree with in what she's saying. It is one thing to refuse to abandon your country and culture even after moving to a new one but it is another to demand everyone "be American" in everything they do. The melting pot means that we all contribute to a whole, not that America is a pot that people melt into and become part of. We're all in the soup, even the white people who've been here a long time. The only part of America that's supposed to be outside the pot for some cryptic reason are the Native American tribes, but that's another topic.

Names are a personal identity, its what you grow up with and is the one constant in your life. You can change what you want people to call you (women especially seem fond of this, marking some change in their lives with a new name), but you're still the person your parents named even if you don't use it. I like ethnic names, and its sad sometimes seeing what happened to names of people who came through Ellis Island and how the overworked clerks there changed them. Braun becomes Brown. Stanczewicz becomes Smith. Too hard to spell, people in line, lets keep it moving.

For some this was a badge of honor: now I am an American. My Grandfather emigrated here from Denmark and refused to speak Danish once he learned English because he wanted to be an American. Others are proud of their heritage, and rightly so. They keep their name Vanderveen and Krzyzewski and defy people to pronounce what they are called with a grin and a wink. That's fine with me, I think it adds to the richness of America.

And that's what some people, particularly in other nations, don't quite comprehend. When you move to America, whatever your ethnic background, you become part of a greater whole: e pluribus unum (out of many, one). You aren't an Irishman living in America, you aren't even Irish-American. You're just American, because this is your country. If I moved to Denmark I wouldn't be American-Danish. I'd just be Danish, eventually.

Now, some people make that transition faster than others. It took years for Italian and Polish and Irish and other immigrants to really blend in, big cities still have the remnants of these ethnic communities such as little Italy in Chicago. That's where the various ethnic delis came from: some clever person opened up a place that had the old world's food in it and made money off the locals. My grandfather, until the day he died, had such a thick Danish accent some people had a hard time understanding him. "TH" was always "D" for him, he just couldn't say it. Some people pick up accents rapidly (such as myself), and blend in rapidly. Others aren't able to ever get it right. As long as they try, and stop clinging to their old home so fiercely.

What I don't care for is the half-a-tard version of names that some 12 year old girl came up with then kept until she has her children. The Laqueeyas and D'Anns and names from soap operas. You see a lot of this kind of name in slums and by strange contrast among the yuppie rich; many basketball players have these faked up names by children (like rappers: snoop doggy dog? Fitty Cent?) or the functionally childish, as do many rich white kids, with parents trying to be "creative" and merely ending up annoying. Most don't go as far as idiotic celebrities, but they still are sad and contribute to the retardization of America. Even someone with an older, established name like Rush Limbaugh, believe it or not, changed his name for a while. He went by Rusty Sharpe for a while as a teenager (as he puts it "Yeah, I wanted an adjective as a last name. Yes, I did."), because his name was Rush and that was just odd - even though it was a third generation name.

This isn't an ethnic thing, this has nothing to do with heritage (although you'll be told that when a black girl names her son Jawand its Zulu for "gonna make me rich, beeyotch"), it's just parents playing cheap, insulting games with not just their kids lives but American culture. But I've written about that before, so no reason to go over old ground again.