Poor Tucker Carlson at Fox News. He pronounced Kamala Harris as Kamela, as in Pamela and has taken hell for that. I would similarly take heat - I have an aunt named Kamla, and I would pronounce Kamala without emphasis on the second a.
BTW, this has nothing to do with politics. I don't watch either Fox or CNN. Most of my TV watching involves sports, sitcom reruns and lots of Smithsonian, National Geographic and History channel episodes. I do love watching Jim Cramer on CNBC. If you did not know better, from his callers, you would think his first name is Booyah.
Continuing with names, I was born Vinod. In Sanskrit, the ancient Hindu language, I am told it stands for joy and humor. I liked those positive connotations. Then I arrived in the US in the late 70s, and I was taken by the Vinnie Barbarino character in Welcome Back, Kotter. So, I started introducing myself as Vinnie. Trust me, it was great as a single young man especially with blind dates. Of course, the letdown when they realized I was not John Travolta quickly negated that.
Then I read Lee Iacocca's (of Ford Mustang and Chrysler fame) autobiography where he explained why he changed his first name from Lido to Lee. Something about not needing two unusual names. I quite liked that logic and started formally using the name Vinnie. Yes, it involved a court visit to make that official. Now, I can carbon date people who knew me when I was Vinod - my family, school and university friends still use that name. A couple still call me Barbarino.
Vinnie has led to its own interesting issues. When I joined Gartner, HR assumed it was short for Vincent. All my payroll slips and tax forms from them show Vincent. I have a few friends who still call me Vincenzo,
What I did not foresee in the 80s was the influence of AI on voice transcription. Vonage's ML has faithfully transcribed voice mail messages for me for over 15 years. I don't think they have ever got Vinnie right. Vini, Winnie, Willy, Timmy, Freddie - there is a long trail of emails to remind me.
Starbucks has never got my name right either. They cannot blame their ML algorithms, but I always smile at the distortions. The funniest one came courtesy of my friend, Holger Mueller. We ordered coffees and as I was paying for them, they asked him what names to put on the cups. I didn't hear what he said and did not notice till we both got on a Southwest plane. Everyone laughed at me as I walked down the aisle. I was clueless till we sat down and he took this photo and showed it to me.
Heheh.
BTW, I love learning about people's last names. It reminds me of the dignity of work when we celebrate the occupations of our ancestors. It could be the Chinese Chong (derived from bow maker), the English Weaver, the Egyptian El Mofti (Arabic for legal expert), Baumgartner (German for orchard) and so many others. Mine comes from our ancestry in Sindh, which for religious reasons my people were forced to leave when the British divided India. I understand it comes from Mir which means chief, and chand which stands for a shining object like the moon. I will take that.
I do admire folks who have retained their birth given names, unusual as they might be. I recently interviewed Neeracha Taychakhoonavudh of Saleforce, and she kindly helped me with the phonetics. She did it with pride in her Thai roots. Similarly, my name sake Vinod Khosla has done way better than me as a venture capitalist.
You know what would be fun? I would love to invite both Tucker and Kamala to my Zoom show. No politics. I would love all 3 of us to just share stories about the trouble our names have got us into. I have shared a few of mine above. Trust me I have many more I could share if the 3 of us got together.
Lighten up folks - let's celebrate our diversity and yes, even make fun of it!
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