The American actress Uzoamaka Aduba, star of the Netflix series Orange Is the New Black, tells a story.
“So I came home from school one day,” said the dual Emmy Award-winning actress, “And my mom was cooking in the kitchen. I said to her: ‘Mommy. Can you call me Zoe?’
“She stopped. She gave that mother look that only mothers know and have. And she said: ‘Why?’
“And I said: ‘Because no one can say Uzoamaka.’
“She looked at me and she said: ‘If they can learn to say Tchaikovsky and Michelangelo and Dostoevsky, then they can say Uzoamaka’.”
It came to mind last week when Channel 5’s Jeremy Vine show featured an exchange during which presenter Dawn Neesom struggled with the name of broadcaster Dr Shola Mos-Shogbamimu.
After trying and failing, Neesom asked Mos-Shogbamimu to say it herself, then tried to opt simply for “Dr Shola”. Then she tried to move on.
Understandably, the outspoken Mos-Shogbamimu wasn’t having it and insisted she keep trying until she managed to get it right.
Dawn’s struggle quite clearly wasn’t borne out of malice. The fault lies with the show. How do you even go to air with a guest whose name you can’t pronounce?
Where is the guide to help presenters – and fellow guests – to show respect to their colleagues by getting it right?
Remarkably, Mos-Shogbamimu has attracted stick with some misguided critics accusing her of embarrassing Neesom.
But this isn’t about Neesom. Every guest on every form of broadcast media deserves the basic respect of having their name pronounced correctly.
A photo emerged last week of President Biden carrying briefing notes in which the name of LA Times representative Courtney Subramanian was spelt phonetically to help with his pronunciation.
Some fans of the Premier League football club Chelsea refer to the captain, César Azpilicueta, as Dave because his teammates claimed not to be able to pronounce his name when he first arrived at Stamford Bridge. They’d have no trouble, however, rattling off Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious or Cholmondley-Warner.
When people see the Irish names Caoimhe (pronounced Kwee-va) or Aoife (Ee-fuh) they take the time to work out how to pronounce them.
The veteran football commentator Derek Rae works so hard at getting foreign players’ names right he is the voice of global PlayStation game FIFA23.
So yes, the whole thing does matter.
Millions of people around the country have their names phonetically mutilated, lampooned or even replaced by people who can’t be bothered to say them. In the workplace, at school or in social situations.
Millions of people spend their lives correcting, re-correcting, and in some cases, shortening their names to the English-sounding bit to pander to the people who, with a bit of effort, could easily get it right.
In that awkward moment on Jeremy Vine, Dr Shola spoke for them. She empowered them to take a stand, reject laziness and indignity, and stand up for their identity.
They’ll have been cheering on Mos-Shogbamimu last week as she drew her line in the sand.
Others have mispronounced her name on TV too. They won’t be doing it any more.
