What’s In A Name?
A visual journey on the semantics of identity
“He said, ‘Look man, nobody’s gonna be able to pronounce this, you gotta change your name.’
So for like two months, I would go to open mics, and I was Sean.”
The above quotes are courtesy of Hasan Minhaj, who took time during one of the intervals of his show, Patriot Act, to riff on the pronunciation of his name. For most viewers, it set up some good laughs about Timothée Chalamet. For all the southeast Asians listening, however, it harkened back to an all-too-real struggle growing up. You don’t have to search too hard on Reddit to find examples of Starbucks baristas butchering someone’s name on an order. But what do you do when your entire childhood is just one long Starbucks barista butchering your name?
There’s a great analysis done on Fivethirtyeight from way back in 2014 on finding the most common name in America. The inimitable Mona Chalabi, along with her then-colleague Andrew Flowers, concluded that the most common name in the country might well be James Smith. It’s not the…
