[MUSIC]
What's in a name?
A rose by any other name would smell just as sweet,
Shakespeare famously said via Juliet.
It's difficult to disagree with Shakespeare, but
I have to respectfully disagree with him on this matter.
The name of a rose or of any other thing or being for
that matter has a direct implication on its smell and so much more.
My journey for what I nowadays call global nominal equity,
nominal, not in the sense of interest rates, but nominal as it relates to names,
started at a very cold autumn afternoon in New England.
This was my first year in the United States, my freshman year in college.
And here I was waiting for a callback audition at small theater in town.
First, five minutes past, Chris went in.
I sat and watched others.
At the ten minutes mark, it was Chuck who went in.
At the 15 minutes mark, it was Clayton.
I stood up and went to the audition manager and asked,
is there a delay in the schedule?
And she said, what's your name?
I said it's Cengiz, spelled out C-E-N-G-I-Z.
She said, I don't see a name like that here.
You must have been waitlisted and I'm sorry nobody dropped out, so
better luck next time.
Dylan, Dylan you're up next.
Confused and dejected, my 18 year old self went back to the seats and
watched a certain Dylan pass by excitedly for his callback audition.
I just wondered, why did they not tell me that I was waitlisted?
Why would they waste my and their time?
I just sat there, thinking and hoping that something would happen,
that Cameron would turn into Cengiz, that Christian would turn into Cengiz.
Nothing turned into Cengiz.
Well, it would take me three years and
two months to figure out exactly what happened that day.
My enterprising future self would do some sleuthing,
would go in and find out the audition list from that day and
find that at 2:45 PM, October 29th, 2014,
my name was indeed penned as Ching, C-H-I-N-G.
>> [LAUGH] >> Come on,
it's not even similar, it could not have been.
I kept thinking, what other things were lost to me, unknowingly,
simply because somebody could not remember, pronounce or spell my name?
What other things were lost?
So it has since then I became emboldened daily, in both quiet and
loud ways, for advocates for now what I call Global Nominal Equity,
meaning we should treat each name with the respect that it deserves and
we make the appropriate accommodations that we pronounce and
spell everyone's name always everywhere.
Well, if you haven't heard of Global Nominal Equity before, you're not alone.
Because I just took the creative license to make it up a couple of months ago.
>> [LAUGH] >> And now it's our turn, I'm sharing it
with you so that we can co-own it, co-co-own it, and co-create it together.
Well, my life has been structured by my name for a very long time like,
actually, all the rest of you in the audience.
On a good day, somebody who meets me for the first time will say,
how do I pronounce your name?
I will say Cengiz with a smile, they will say Cengiz with a smile and
they will continue to pronounce it without hesitation with a smile in their eyes,
with positive feelings all around.
On a bad day, however, somebody who meets me for the first time will say,
how do I pronounce your name?
I will say Cengiz and they will say, this sounds very difficult,
I think I will butcher it, so I'm scared, I'm just not going to say it.
And then I'll say, it's not that difficult.
Come on, well, it's two syllables actually, it's Cen and giz.
There's plenty of bottles and now if these bring a historical connection by saying it
comes from [INAUDIBLE] so that it gets anchored in your minds.
Well, the answer it's about their member,
their answer continues saying first of all, who is that?
I don't know.
And second of all, it's really difficult.
I'll just pass this one out,
to just proceed to interact with me without mentioning my name ever again.
And potentially forgetting many things that we talked about except one
small fact that my name was unpronounceable.
Well, this doesn't only happen to me.
In the broader Anglo Saxon universe, it also happens to Mailey,
Yuvgagne, Agnieszka, Dierdre, and Adebouale.
But we are all perpetrators of this.
The number of times I said Margots instead of Margeau or
Jeanne instead of Jean before I was corrected that he's not
a character from Aladdin was just one too many.
And that is why I believe that we should make sure that we do not
provide blatant commentary on the most personal and
intimate yet public thing that we all have, our first names.
That is exactly why today I chose to talk to you about the notion of having
an unpronounceable names and what should we do to ensure that we treat each
name respectfully and make the appropriate accommodations.
One's name, the sound of which, the spelling of which,
the shape of every letter of which to dramatize a little bit,
has a direct impact on our existence, our self ideation,
our public perception, our chance of leaving a legacy, our past and our future.
Many people we know of went to great lengths to change their names so
that they could make them more pronounceable.
Issur Danielovitch became Kirk Douglas, Natalie Hershlag became Natalie Portman,
Tont Woods became Tiger Woods and Robert Allen Zimmerman became Bob Dylan,
and he in fact famously said, some people are just born with the wrong names.
I disagree with him too after disagreeing with Shakespeare.
Well, actually, research has shown many things about this front.
Research shows five things.
One, that people with unpronounceable names have more difficulty forming
intimate connections.
They have more difficulty, two,
they have more difficulty leaving a lasting impression during a job interview.
Three, they have difficulty having their name being remembered.
Four, they perform worse at school and five,
they have a smaller chances of being an elected public official.
Yes, even that.
Unpronounceable names are more likely to be misremembered and
mispronounced even after correction.
And with each mispronunciation, slightly altering our self perceived identity,
our already complicated existence, our foreignness and our difference.
And that is why it is up to our hands to ensure that we do not introduce
further micro-inequalities into our already deeply unequal world and
take up the matter into our hands and
find a way in which we treat everyone with a challenging or
an easy name with the same willingness to remember, excitement and curiosity.
Well, you might ask, how do we do that?
It actually starts very simple, with a very, very simple shift.
It's a mental shift.
It starts with realizing one thing, and that is that no name is
actually unpronounceable, it's a little bit dull, but it is dull.
There are no names that are unpronounceable.
If somebody chose to name their child something,
this means they were able to pronounce it.
That also means you too, after not too many attempts,
will be able to pronounce it.
I promise, if you cannot pronounce it right, they will correct it.
The key is to lean into it, not to shy away from it.
There is a lot of shame in not trying, but there's no shame in trying.
So the next time when you come across a name that you immediately
deem to be relatively complicated and unpronounceable, take a second,
think about it in your mind, rehearse it, and then say it out loud.
And then ask the person, did I say it right?
If you didn't, they will correct it.
And after not too many attempts, you will ultimately get it right.
Well, it's sometimes a little bit more difficult.
So what you'll have to do, my recommendation,
is that lean into it a bit more and then try to use the name,
actually refer to the person with the name without omitting it.
So every time you're actually trying to get that person's attention,
say the name again and again and again so that it gets anchored in your mind and for
bonus points, you can even ask what it means and where it comes from.
Well, it is time that we make every name pronounceable,
not by changing our names but by changing our attitudes towards them.
We need to ensure that we live in a world in which everybody
feels equally seen and equally respected.
It is time that we, the ones with unpronounceable names,
have to stop carrying the burden of others inability to pronounce our names.
So to build that equitable world, let's all commit ourselves to making
every word that's seemingly unpronounceable, pronounceable, and
with that, every person that is seemingly foreign, intricately familiar.
And to do so, let's commit ourselves to now our co-owned and
co-coined term, Global Nominal Equity.
Thank you >> [APPLAUSE]
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