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Americans Couldn’t Pronounce My Hebrew Name—It Felt Like a Personal Attack

Growing up in North Carolina as the daughter of two rabbis was hard enough—growing up with a name like mine was even harder.
My parents named me Meirav Batsheva. Meirav means abundance in Hebrew. The “rav” in my name comes from my great-grandpa Ruby, who fought for this country in World War II and fled Russia to give his children a better life. I am proud to have his name be a part of mine.
Batsheva, which translates to “daughter of the oath”, comes from my great-grandmother’s name, Bertha. She was another strong woman in my family who wore her Jewish identity proudly and swore to care for her siblings when her parents died during her adolescence. It is an honor to carry on her legacy in my name as well.
I grew up going to Jewish Day School until 5th grade, knowing that when someone in my class couldn’t say my name correctly, it only took a 5-second explanation to rectify the pronunciation and move on.
When I entered secular school for the first time in 6th grade, I encountered many students who had never met a Jew with a name that wasn’t “Rachel” or “Aaron”. For most of them, I was the first Jew they met with a Hebrew name that wasn’t phonetically simple or memorable from their church Bible classes.
That year, I felt incredibly protective of my name. I got upset every time a teacher or a peer called me “Mary” or “Mayrave.” Growing up knowing the deep and beautiful history of my name, every mispronunciation felt like a personal attack. And in some ways, it was.
As a proud citizen of our diverse and multi-ethnic country, I know that not everybody comes from a community of people with hard-to-pronounce names. I have been introduced to folks with names that I find challenging. But that doesn’t mean I don’t try. I slow down and I check in with them over and over to make sure I am getting it correct—not just because that’s the right thing to do, but because I know what it feels like to have someone see you in your wholeness, saying your name correctly because they took the time to listen and learn.
This is one of the central messages of a Ted Talk by Gerardo Ochoa. He talks about similar experiences he had with mispronunciations of his name. He cites categories created by educator Jenifer Gonzalez for three types of people who approach complicated names—”the fumble mumbler”, “the arrogant mangler”, and “the calibrator”—adding his own fourth category, “the evader.”
By the time I graduated high school, I had been confronted with countless “arrogant manglers” who mispronounced my name on the first try and even with my patient guidance, proceeded to say my name incorrectly with confidence. I also encountered “evaders”, those who heard my name, and faced with its complexity, asked for a nickname that would be easier to manage.
After years of contending with these “arrogant manglers” and “evaders”, I began to unconsciously emotionally detach from my name. It’s not that I didn’t like the name anymore or forgot the history behind it, I was simply tired of correcting teachers, administrators, pharmacists, doctors, and other students. I was tired of explaining my existence.
I concluded, like many immigrants and people of color in this country with complicated names, that if they weren’t willing to put the effort into learning my name, why should I put in the effort to convince them that my name was worth learning to pronounce?
As I entered college, I found that I had grown completely numb to mispronunciations of my name. I could barely detect when others said it wrong anymore. Constantly, I would joke, “If it starts with an M and ends with a V or Z, I’ll probably respond.”
Now, we stand to elect the first Black, Indian, woman president of the United States. Yet, too many of her opponents, politicians and media personalities fail to say her name correctly. To be clear, there is far more at stake in this election. People’s lives are on the line.
But how many young Americans will be discouraged from getting involved in electoral politics because they know that their name will be butchered on live TV? How many of them would shy away from engaging in civic society because printing their names on yard signs correctly is too much to ask? When I was younger, I thought I wanted to run for president someday. But I couldn’t fathom who would vote for someone with a name they would have to learn to pronounce.
I’m not the first one with a complicated name to fight for Vice President Kamala Harris and I won’t be the last. She’s got thousands upon thousands of us who are going to organize and vote in November. It’s about more than her vision for America. Seeing her name spelled correctly on the ballot means that maybe one day, one of ours can be spelled correctly on a ballot too.
Meirav Solomon is an International Relations major with a concentration in the Middle East at Tufts University. She is a Conservative Jew from North Carolina and has spent considerable time in both Israel and Palestinian areas. Meirav is a proud Seeds of Peace alum, an alum of the Kivunim Gap Year program and an alum of the School for Ethics and Global Leadership.
She serves on the J Street U National Board and was the President of her chapter of J Street U at Tufts this past semester. She will be attending the Rothberg International School at Hebrew University in Jerusalem for a study abroad next semester and will be studying Conflict Resolution and International Relations along with Arabic.
All views expressed are the author’s own.
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