Get a good name
I have a colleague whose name is often mispronounced by others. This coworker included the correct pronunciation in their Slack bio and I heard them say their name, so I'm confident I know how to pronounce it. Despite this, people across teams – and even within our own team – often get it wrong. What worries me is that my coworker never corrects anyone in meetings or phone calls, and I can't help but feel upset on their behalf. I want to address this issue because I believe we should strive to call everyone by their correct name/pronunciation, but I'm not sure if it's my job to intervene or how to approach this without overstepping. Would it be inappropriate for me to privately contact those who mispronounce their names to gently correct them? Or should I let my colleague decide how to handle it??
– Name-conscious colleague
This is difficult. Names can be difficult to pronounce for several reasons. The name sounds “foreign” or is unusual. The name reads like one thing, but sounds like something else. The name is ambiguous, or the pronunciation can be pronounced in different ways. (“Anna,” a name common in several languages from Spanish to Italian to Russian, falls into this category.)
But constantly mispronouncing someone's name can say a lot about someone. It suggests a lack of attention to detail. An inability to listen. Faulty memory. Or, at worst, purposeful disrespect. (Remember how Donald Trump and other Republicans insisted on mispronouncing Kamala Harris' first name during the recent presidential campaign?)
We so rarely hear our names spoken out loud that when we do, we want others to do it right. A man I recently dated admitted that because he had never said my name out loud, he didn't know how to pronounce it. Although I don't really care whether people call me “AN-na” (the correct pronunciation) or “AH-na,” I found his self-intervention charming and thoughtful.
However, for some people, mispronouncing their name is a lifelong irritation. I started a job a few years ago where one of the top managers had a name that “read” like one thing, but was actually pronounced something else. When I made the mistake of mispronouncing her name during an introductory meeting, she quickly corrected me (somewhat sharply, I might add). But I understood her point of view. She probably needs to make corrections often, and the confident way I pronounced (or in this case mispronounced) her name was probably a mess.
But back to your colleague and whether you should intervene. I don't think you should do that. Instead, I think you can simply educate others by continuing to show, not tell, that is, by pronouncing your coworker's name correctly in front of others. Just don't contact colleagues privately; that can come across as patronizing or put them on the defensive. Trust your coworker to deal with it in the best way he or she can right now, and let him/her decide how to deal with it in the future. And that may not mean anything.
