You've probably mispronounced my name

One of my teachers at secondary school once told me that Oxford University stopped offering single honours degrees in Philosophy because students would go crazy and experience existential crises, obsessively questioning the meaning of life and everything else. Also in fear that I'll second guess my existence and fall into a downward spiral, I generally try not to get too introspective or dwell on things.

But feeling adventurous, the other day I asked my parents if they ever thought about how the name they chose for me would hold significance in the West. Before I was born they'd already spent a number of years abroad, back and forth between Egypt and the UK. So the fact that we moved to Bath in 2003 and have lived in England ever since shouldn't have been a massive shock. With that in mind, you'd have thought "pronounceability" was a criterion high on the list of requirements for choosing a name. There's nothing at all special about my name in Muslim-majority countries but it's not the easiest word to pronounce for non-Arabic speakers. My parents replied, "Nope, never considered it". I asked them, "What about the English spelling?" Surely they could have used the more phonetic one. Nah, that was the spelling that's used in Egypt apparently. "Yahya" would have made things too easy for the foreign folk.

Then again, to be fair to my parents, I'm not sure how much the spelling makes a difference. That same teacher who tried putting me off studying Philosophy used to call me "Yeh" - not as a term of endearment but because she couldn't be bothered to attempt saying my name properly. Another teacher once called me "Yee-ha". On a more regular basis, I'm accustomed to answering to "Yeh-hi-ya" and I'm often called "Ye-here" or "Yeh-Yeh".

And while all these variations cause the occasional headache or make me sometimes question the "right" way to pronounce my own name, the truth is that I tend to enjoy the variety. With my (tacit) approval, each person has their own twist on how they say my name. It adds an element of individuality to something that's supposedly personal to me only. And having all these versions means that my name is no longer something that I solely possess and have to guard; it's now open to "interpretation" by others... It also makes life easier if I mostly go with the flow.

But I didn't always feel this way about it.

New to the country and stubborn about my Egyptian identity, I militantly disciplined my peers and teachers at primary school to pronounce my name exactly in the same way it's said back home. During secondary school I was more relaxed and let slip the creative pronunciations like "Yee-ha". Now in my adult life I seem to have found the balance; for those keen to get it right, I'll repeat my name a few times until it clicks with them (if it ever does), but for those who are less concerned about the pronunciation, I mirror the same attitude. I even let some people who are really struggling with it to just call me "John" - the English equivalent of my name.

What I now seem to have settled on is this idea of relativism towards my name rather than being dogmatic towards its pronunciation. I consider the wider context of where I'm interacting with someone, who they are and the situation we're in. For example, is this just the one time they're expected to say my name, will they exploit the freedom I might give them in saying it as they wish, are they genuinely doing their best to say it, and how much does it actually matter to me if they don't say it "right" in this moment of time?

When I was younger and held the absolutist attitude towards my own name, believing that there was only one way to say it - no exceptions - I naively extended it to others. I was pretty offended when an acquaintance got annoyed at me after I called him "Kareem" and not "Karim", with the latter being the way he preferred his name to be pronounced. He was a British Arab who'd lived here all his life and barely spoke Arabic; I'd spent the first parts of my life in Egypt and I have a cousin who we call "Kareem", the same way everyone pronounces that name in the Arabic world. I wasn't going to conform to the mutilation of his name, I was going to use the proper pronunciation; I didn't care what the brainwashed "Karim" wanted people to call him. But he was right. It's his own name after all and he has the power to decide how it should be said. Who am I to tell him how his name should be uttered or how he should feel about it? Tell me to pronounce it as "Kirim" for all I care.

As the years go by I notice that not only is there a growing trend in people taking a cautious approach towards pronouncing my name and asking for my feelings towards it, but I've also been getting told more often that I should care how my name is pronounced. The conversation usually goes something like this: "Sorry, did I pronounce your name right?", "Nah, but it's OK, I don't really mind", "Oh no, well you should care".

It's typically a White person who tells me this; and I could only assume that their experiences with names are a little different to mine, so I find it odd for them to be so prescriptive. They want me to be proud of my identity and to not conform to racists by bowing to any (mis)pronunciation of my name. I think perhaps they have taken on this absolutist philosophy and want others to subscribe to it too. They want to be told how my name should be pronounced in a certain way and only in this way. Or maybe they mistake my indifference for impotence. And while I appreciate others caring on my behalf, please don't assume that I'm being oppressed and am powerless just because I show a degree of disregard when my name is botched or Anglicised.

Of course on some level I do care about my name - but there are limits to how much I want to be defined by it or for that topic to endlessly consume my energy. There's no doubt that it's nice when someone pronounces my name in a way that I'd hear it said back in Egypt; but it's also pretty exhausting to constantly correct people or to hold vendettas against all those who butcher my name. And yeah, I do take pride in my nationality and heritage; but there are other ways of doing this beyond fixating on a name - plus, it's also pretty funny when someone unintentionally refers to me as "she" or says "Hi Nasr" in an email because they've never come across my name before.

But this relaxed attitude that I carry comes with a big and obvious caveat. I'm probably in the minority when I say I don't entirely care how you pronounce my name. The subject of names and the weight they hold is increasingly gaining more traction in the public discourse. More and more people of colour especially are now speaking up about the importance of having their name pronounced or spelled correctly and the unity it has with their sense of identity. And that's a great thing.

Just because I show partial apathy towards my name, it doesn't mean that you should assume my views are reflective of every other Black or Brown person's. My own feelings come from a tendency to choose the path of least resistance and a fear of falling in the downward spiral if I care too much - but they also come from a position of privilege. Any name-related jokes that I've experienced (whether they're genuine attempts at humour or disguised form of bullying) haven't impacted me deeply. And I haven't worked in an environment where colleagues are harassed or are butts of jokes purely because of their name. Individual experiences help manifest different beliefs, and mine aren't representative of anyone else's. Just because I may not call someone out for making fun of my name, it obviously shouldn't give them freedom to exploit this licence and to offend others who will have different feelings about their name.

And let's not lose sight of the fact that it can often be racist to mispronounce a name. Unintentionally getting a name wrong upon the first time of saying it and then immediately asking if it was said correctly is hardly a mortal sin. On the flip side, there's been a continual history behind the deliberate mispronunciation of names to cause offence. There are also no shortage of cases where people are discriminated against on the basis of their names or where people report feeling alienated or a pressure to Anglicise and Whitewash their name. Historically speaking, especially, lots of people of colour will have also felt a pressure to change their name so that it conforms with English ideals.

But again, we should be careful before jumping to conclusions. Is it racist that "Mohamed" often gets shortened to "Mo"? Or that some men named "Samir" prefer to be called "Sam"? Is it erasing parts of Muslim identity? For those who have it happen to them without their genuine permission, yes. Others will feel empowered enough to just shorten their name or they may not have thought this all through and are just going with the norm - and we don't need to read too much into that.

Yes, we shouldn't always pander to people who will ordinarily make little effort to get a name right, but please don't assume that feeling indifference towards my name is an acceptance of oppression or that we're all victims of xenophobia because our name has been shortened or is pronounced in five different ways.

Too often we forget that we don't live in a world of binaries. There are some universal truths and standards we should all be held to, but how these issues affect us will largely vary from one person to another. And a person's idea of how their name should be said might differ from their namesake's, or how much they care about the topic could lie anywhere along a spectrum. So, call me insane but I don't think these things are all incompatible:

1. It's sometimes funny being unintentionally called "Yee-ha" or seeing someone struggle with and butcher my name

2. The mispronunciation of names can be weaponised by racists; and many other people of colour, with good reason, are very protective of their name

3. I don't have to ardently police how my name is pronounced or accept being told by others that I ought to care about my name

Then again if I didn't care about how you pronounce my name, would I have written a blog about it?