- Hello everybody.
Right now, I am going to go over one of the early
BuzzFeed videos that I made.
This is something that I produced, directed, shot, edited,
and was also in.
It was one of the very first videos that I even put
myself in and it is because I felt
so close to the subject,
and it is called "9 Struggles of Having A Unique Name."
(cheerful music)
Let's begin.
- Tommy?
- [Student] Yep.
- And uh,
oh I'm not even gonna try with this one.
- It's Daisha
- Right, Daisha. Okay.
- The professor just tries to like skip over Daisha's name
because he's like "Ooo, I'm not even gonna do it
with this one."
That is something that often happens.
Sometimes it's better than them just
mispronouncing your name though.
In this beat, it's me trying to explain
just how to say my name,
and giving someone a pneumonic reference,
and in the video I say "hey Shawn, tell me the answer,"
which is something that I've said many times.
And I still often get called the wrong name.
And then Daisha's doing the same thing for her name.
And then a white guy calls her name "exotic."
- So it's Daisha, like day and night.
- Oh, okay. Wow, that's exotic.
(reduced speed voice) That's exotic.
- Which, of course, is far too prevalent
and something that happens.
- Yeah
- So my name is actually, I guess it has
just kind of a French origin.
No one in my family is French that I know of,
it was just a name that my parents liked.
And so, any time people ask me what my name means,
or how my name came about,
I just say
"oh it's a name that has a French origin to it."
When they ask if I speak French and I say "no,"
they often get disappointed, or angry that I have a
French name without speaking French.
Oh, no I don't speak French.
- No?
- No.
- Oh, bummer.
- This next beat I'm at Starbucks trying to give my name.
Most of the time I just don't even give my real name anymore
because it just gets butchered.
Every time I walk by a stand or a stall
that has the personalized name gifts,
I always stop and see if there's a Chantel.
And there's only been one one time.
It was a tape of sing-alongs for little children.
The singer on it would be like
"This song is for Zachary" or whatever,
and so it was Chantel but she also said it "Shan-tel."
My victory was a little bit slighted,
but, you know, one day, maybe that's a business I can do.
Just doing unique names on these personalized gifts.
People named Chris you get everything.
Chris' get everything.
I'm just being a little sassy bean right here
with my iPhone 4.
So it's like a telemarketer calls and is like
"is Shantel available" and I'm like
"She's not here. Sorry, there's no one by that name here."
And that's the end of the video. (giggles)
Look at me in my little jewelry and dresses.
I loved this dress.
This was the first watch that I ever bought.
I'm a watch connoisseur,
and that's the first one I ever bought, fun fact.
Just, a little oily, little frizzy,
little younger, little more naive.
Even back then, even though I barely wore makeup,
I would never be in a video unless I had makeup on.
Whereas now, this morning, I shot a video without makeup
and I was like "oh I don't care."
And so, I think it's just with more knowledge
comes more power.
And so, now that I know how to do stuff,
I can make the active choice,
rather than making a choice out of fear
of how I portray myself.
One of my favorite things about this video was going through
the comments and seeing people be like
"but the name Chantel isn't even that hard,"
because I was like "Thank you!
Thank you for this validation."
And there would be people who were like
"My name is Daisha, my name is Chantel.
This is what I go through,"
and I was like "Ah. There is a community of us.
This is so cool."
As a final word,
my name is pronounced Chantel.
It is spelt C-H-A-N-T-E-L.
My last name is also Houston, not House-ton, but Houston.
And it's O-N, not E-N,
or A-N,
or I-N.
If you say, Shan-tel Houstin, or Chantel House-ton,
I'm not gonna know who you're talking about.
And I'll probably just direct you to someone else.
If you send me a PR email that says,
"Hi Chantal," I also don't know who you're talking to,
so I guess I won't respond to you.
That's it. (laughs)
If you're sending me an email
you have to type my name into the email,
so you can spell it right in the body of the email
that's all I'm saying.
(cheerful music)