With Love From Yale: Call Me By My Name

Rangoli Gupta, Class of 2020

“What’s in a name? that which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet.”

Words are important: while living abroad, I’m missing chai not tea, I want pakoras not fritters. Names are important and integral to our identities. Mine is unusual, so I anticipated that it would take a minute for the Yalies to get it right. But there wasn’t really any question that eventually they’d (make the effort and) get it right. Because isn’t that Getting-to-Know-Someone 101?

Except it’s not. Learning someone’s name, and the right way to pronounce it is time-consuming and frustrating. In class, should I repeatedly spend time explaining my name or should I make my point? It’s a conversation I’ve had with many other visiting and international students over this semester. Should I anglicize my name? Or should I suffer through people mispronouncing it over and over again? Should I offer people a menu of alternatives: Rangoli, Gupta, R.G.? Should I simply refuse to respond to anything other than rʌŋˈɡəʊli?

The immediate response people have to my name matters: there’s an important difference between the professor who spent five minutes of class time getting my name right and the man behind me in the line at Starbucks who smiled and said, “Probably want to pick something easier next time, huh?” It’s the difference between the roommate who asked me to break it into syllables and repeat it until she got it right and the woman at the Yale shipping centre who asked me my first name and said, “Jesus. Last name, maybe?”

During my first semester at Ashoka, I took Indian Civilisations with Professor Gandhi. He told us that names have weight — they represent history, our culture, and our traditions. Getting them right isn’t about courtesy or politeness; it’s much more fundamental than that. And that’s why I don’t believe that wanting to get someone’s name right is just a function of how frequently you have to interact with them, or how close you are. However, this understanding places another burden on the choice of what to go by: is modifying my name a betrayal of some kind?

There are practical implications of people not getting your name right or your name being “difficult” — you don’t get called on in class as often and people are hesitant about approaching you. Perhaps as a response to this challenge, Yale launched a program called “NameCoach” in late January, which “gave students the ability to record [their] names in [their] own voice as [they] wanted it to be spoken.”

It’s a recognition of the fact that names aren’t trivial, that getting them right is important. NameCoach is accessible to everyone at Yale. But it’s still entirely voluntary, so while I agree that it is a step in the right direction, I am apprehensive about its results. But, then again, what are the alternatives? I doubt that forcing people to listen would have positive consequences on my interactions with them.

All of this is not to say that I don’t appreciate this opportunity — my semester so far has been amazing! I’ve taken classes taught by excellent faculty, I’ve travelled, I’ve interacted with exceptional peers, and so much more. But I’ve also become cognizant of the privilege I enjoy back home, where just saying, “Hi, I’m Rangoli,” doesn’t present an obstacle. It’s also made me more careful about not inflicting the same circumstances on others.

A rose by any other name might smell just as sweet, but would the most famous love story in the world be as poignant if it were called Rorschach and Juliet?

Rangoli Gupta is a second-year student majoring in Politics, Philosophy and Economics. She spent her fourth-semester at Yale University, USA.