I hated the car line in elementary school. Every day, at 2:30 pm, a hundred fourth and fifth graders would line the hallways of the school, waiting for our names to be called. I’d been a student at this school since first grade, yet the same administrators who called each child to go to their car, always mispronounced my name. The variations were innumerable, and I eventually gave up trying to correct people.
“Micheal Kawooya”, was all the assistant principal had to say. Yet, what always came out was an unfamiliar combination of random syllables.
My name, like all names, is a central part of my identity. A person can change their hair, or style on any given day, however their name, legally, follows them through every aspect of their life. The Eurocentric society we live in has never favored “ethnic names.” To foster a shared sense of respect for one another, we must put in an effort to spell and pronounce everyone’s name regardless of how difficult. Otherwise, people feel unseen, unwelcome, and insecure in their own skin.
In my experience, the unusual spelling of my first name, as opposed to “Michael”, has acted as a conversation starter my entire life. From my yearly visits to the dentist to roll call on the first day of school, the second someone reads my name out loud, it’s always followed by a comment: “Why the ‘e’ before the ‘a’?” or “How is it pronounced?’”. In these instances, my first name signifies my individuality, which can be for better, or for worse. The first time I saw a red line under my name in Google Docs, that was enough to make me wish I had a name that was acceptable to AI. The discriminatory standard conventions of English embedded in computer programs made me get used to autocorrect respelling my name in emails, text messages, and programs from my musical theatre shows in middle school. And when a stranger did spell my name right, I immediately gained an affinity for them because, in doing so, they’d chosen to acknowledge my individuality. The bar my insecurities set for me to go about my life with a “difficult” name was low, and it often detracted any assurance I had about my identity.
My surname, “Kawooya”, is often the part of my name people have difficulty pronouncing. “Kah•woy•uh”, the traditional Ugandan pronunciation always struggled to roll off the tongues of my South Carolinian friends and teachers. Eventually, I began introducing myself as Micheal “Kah•woo•uh”—a more simple iteration for strangers, and a noticeable difference to my Ugandan parents. This manifested into a Mandela effect, as I continued pronouncing my last name wrong to assimilate, what was wrong eventually became right. Even then, this small change didn’t prevent people from mispronouncing my name and commenting on the spelling throughout grade school. Jokes like “Micheal, search up www.namechange.com” fed insecurity into a child already hyper-aware of his accent and dark skin tone in a homogeneous, predominantly white community. As I grew older, I grew further apart from my Ugandan identity as if this would somehow grant me a new last name, like “Brown” or “Smith”.
It took years for the shell of the elementary school student anxiously waiting in the car line to realize his name wasn’t the problem, and that his blame was misdirected towards himself. Coming to Andover, the large number of people who felt both secure and proud of their identities overwhelmed me. However, I learned through late night conversations about our pasts that for others, this feeling of pride didn’t come without years of self-doubt. I understood my experience was far from singular, and my peers were a comforting sign that self love isn’t out of reach. Being surrounded by people from different backgrounds helped me realize how I robbed myself from years of happiness by trying to fit a eurocentric definition of identity. My name, while unconventional, shouldn’t be an imposition I have to rectify for the convenience of others—it should be my name, in all its glory.
Now, I’ve begun correcting my pediatrician, disabling spell check on Google Docs, and embracing every syllable of my Ugandan name. I politely correct people who mispronounce my name because I am proud of my name, and like all names, it deserves to be said correctly.
