PDA

View Full Version : The consequences of having a ‘foreign’ name



lastlid
9th November 2012, 16:17
"There's a multicultural panoply of names in many British school registers these days. But once many people found themselves wishing for a plain "British" name, writes Sangita Myska.

Some things in life should be simple, like booking a table at a restaurant, ordering a takeaway or pretty much anything that involves saying my name - either on the telephone or in person.

Yet, for me, it never has been.

For years, my name's been put through the verbal mincer to produce a truly ghastly feast of phonetic sausage meat - my favourite being "Fang-eater".

Growing up in the 1980s, it was the endless stream of awkward corrections and garbled pronunciation that made me hanker after a name English people could pronounce.

Having said that, I've stuck with it. Exactly why, I'm not entirely sure. I know plenty of other immigrants who have anglicised, adapted or ditched altogether their distinctly foreign-sounding names. And I've often wondered why in modern, multicultural Britain they feel they should."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-20228060