What's My Name Again?

In my original study abroad application, I wrote that I hoped experiencing life abroad would help me to better relate to the experiences of immigrants to the United States. And it has.* But I had always assumed I would never know what it was like to be not white in the United States, because white people are generally honored - not ridiculed - in Asian and African countries.


For the most part, that remains true. Because I am white (and Northern European-looking), I don't really stand out for harassment as a foreigner by sight. When I open my mouth, of course, I get the dreaded "Woher kommst du?" (Where are you from?), but that's not the same.

Something that has provided me with some perspective on the experiences of people of color in the United States, however, is the name issue. Simply shaking a new acquaintance's hand and saying my name is sometimes enough to bring on the "Woher kommst du?" My name is foreign, and so I get the questions and the puzzled expressions that go along with a foreign-sounding name.

I sometimes say KAY-ree here (which is just an approximation, though, because German R's are more gutteral than ours), to make it easier for my Austrian conversation partners to understand what I'm saying. (German gets peppered with enough English words for me to understand how difficult it is to understand something in one language, with a completely different pronunciation style, in the middle of a sentence in another.) But that can lead to problems, because I can't roll my R's like Austrians do, and with Keri already being an uncommon name, a lot of times people think I'm saying Kelly.

So I sometimes use the American pronunciation. It is, after all, my name. But then I get blank looks or  "bitte?" (huh?) -- the same reactions I show when someone with a non-English name introduces themselves to me. And they get old. I had never really understood before what I privilege it is to have a name that's self-evident, expected, understand without effort -- in a word, hegemonic.

I am reminded of the time one of my work colleagues wanted me to find him on Facebook and simply said, "my last name is Pfaffel." He was taken aback by my blank response, fingers hovering over the keys. I had no idea how to spell his last name, which might be hegemonic and self-evident in Austria, but was totally out-of-the-ordinary to my American ears.

I am reminded of an Austrian-born man from Turkey, with whom I spoke during our mosque visit in Penetrating Ethnic Communities last semester, who mentioned that one of the most insidious reminders of his outsider status was the constant need to spell out his name.

I am reminded of a play I once saw at Harvard, set in the 1920s, in which a WASP reporter was told that a family of Polish people had died in a house fire. "Kaszinsky was their name." "WHAT?!! Spell it!" Much laughter ensued.

I am reminded of a friend of mine at Harvard, who went by Suzy for years before deciding that her name was actually Suzanna (the legacy of her Mexican father), and that if English speakers were going to sound silly saying it, fine, but they should at least try.

And I am reminded of this video by two Harvard students, talking about how names connotate belonging.



*I don't want to overexaggerate things -- I'm seen as an American here, which is not the same as a real Ausländer, and it's pretty much assumed that I'm going to leave, so I don't get any of the "Austria for the Austrians" crap, except in jest.