Writes Scaachi Koul in "An Indian Person’s Guide to Saying Kamala Harris’ Name Correctly/Get outta here with 'Comma-la'" (Slate).
It seems to me that however a person pronounces their own name becomes the correct pronunciation, even if that name is also a word in another language in which it is pronounced differently. I have a last name with a first syllable that I've always pronounced to rhyme with "salt," but I've often encountered people who see the foreign language origin — German — and pronounce it with the "al" more like the name "Al." So I don't believe you can be "saying [your] own name wrong." Whatever you said was ipso facto right. I don't see why you'd need to think of the pronunciation that you chose as a "stupider, faker name" when your motivation was to make it easier for the people around you to say. If you want to challenge other people to say a difficult name, you've got to tell them.
Koul tells us that "kamala" means "lotus" and is pronounced something like "comm-la," but I don't think we should start pronouncing Kamala Harris's name like that until she starts saying it like that.
By the way, I'm seeing efforts to make a meme out of LOTUS ≈ POTUS. Do you like that hocus pocus?
In any case, I found that interesting article because I was looking for something else. I'd got an impression that Kamala Harris — and/or her people — wanted us to refrain from calling her "Kamala," that there's a message out there that it's disrespectful to refer to her by her first name and we ought to be saying "Harris," as we'd say "Trump" or "Biden."
Is that happening? If it is, I see 2 problems. First, we often refer to the politicians we especially like by their first names. I like Ike. Teddy. Abe. Bernie. It's also the way we speak of royalty and saints. Second, correcting people, even if they're not hitting your preference, feels priggish and stiff. It's just not a good way to build a following.
That said, I do get the idea that it can feel demeaning to be called by your first name. I've asked, on this blog, that people call me Althouse and not Ann. So I get it. But I'm not out there asking tens of millions of people to feel affection for me.
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Any alleged mispronunciation of Kamala by a Republican will be racist. The most obscene homophobic pun of Usha Vance's name will be clever and funny.
Scolding rarely wins friends.
Nor should Harris be wanting people to feel affection for her. She should be wanting to impress them with her executive ability, grasp of policy, diplomacy...
But I can see why she'd go with affection, given those alternatives.
Trump, who does seem to inspire quite a lot of either affection or hatred in people, at least has a track record. (Cue "yeah, he went bankrupt six times!" or whatever it is. And then check the records of other entrepreneurs.)
My brother, dad, and I all pronounce our last name differently. my brother’s is more similar to the heritage pronunciation, my dad’s closer to the Americanized, and mine is so that people can more easily spell the name .
As someone having a last name that's never pronounced correctly (and corrections always seem to go unheeded) I don't give two shits about Kamala Harris' name pronunciation problems.
Thankfully, she is unburdened by the previous pronunciations and is now focused on future mispronunciations that could be.
I plan to assist her in creating these future linguistic burdens.
my last name is mispronounced by ANYONE that sees it written..
mostly because it's not really my last name, its the misspelling given by the Ellis Island people.
A added benefit, is that ANYONE that hears it Can't spell it..
This is something that You Just Had To Live With.. *IF* you enter the country Legally..
*IF* my ancestors had just Snuck in, like people do now.. We could have just kept our Plattdütsch name
The fundamental problem is there's no standard pronunciation of English words spelled using a Roman alphabet which makes it nearly impossible to establish an English phonetic spelling that will match the pronunciation of a non-English word.
"Ghoti" can be pronounced "fish", for given pronunciation of each letter or combination of letters.
Well, to start, I had not seen your request before using your first name in past posts. I'll avoid that in the future.
But to address the general point, I think that using a first name is sometimes a mark of, and sometimes an effort to create, intimacy. I consciously use someone's first name when I want to be certain of getting their attention. I can see a democrat using Kamala rather than Harris to suggest a closeness, an emotional identification, with her. So yes I think the choice of first or last name means something.
But to suggest that use of her first name is demeaning is to stress that relationships are always about power. Which is a very Democratic, Marxian, and myopic thing to do.
She grew up in canada but who cares
Is the premise here that Kamala is pronouncing her own name wrong, or that Republicans are racist and sexist for pronouncing it wrong? So hard to keep up.
My dad and my paternal grandfather could never agree on how to pronounce our Italian last name, which starts with a “Ch.” Dad always said (so I always corrected people to do so, too) that it was pronounced with a hard K (think Chianti). But grandpop, the son of the immigrants who brought it here, always said “Chee”. Grandpop also said “It-lee”, and described things from It-lee as “Talian”, which also drove my dad nuts.
We had fun times.
Clearly it’s Cum-ala. that’s straight from her mouth. Thank you, I’ll be here all week.
This is more liberal media BS. It’s insufferable but we’ll be getting it for the rest of the campaign season.
And the article acts like no one ever called Trump “Donald”. Even their BS made up claims lie and distort and lie… and lie.
Great. More scolds supporting political candidates.
Hillary!! wasn't called Clinton, very often (or Rodham-Clinton), mostly to separate her from Bill. I agree that Harris should be called Harris.
I have relatives last name Meehan, that's not ME HAN, it's ME ANN. The H is silent. Few can remember, it's just so not natural. Mamala is my favorite also, easy to pronounce. The first mother of our country or so Drew Barrymore thinks.
narciso said...
"She grew up in canada but who cares"
Heh. Kamalá Canadá.
My name is spelled J-I-L-L, but it is pronounced "doctor jill."
I'm so sorry, Althouse! I won't do it again.
I have a given name that is singular in the nation. (not my nom de internet) After a lifetime of searching, I have found no other individual in the country with my given name. I need no last name in my world, my first name suffices.
It's not hard to pronounce. Yet, some never get it right. I have had workmates who pronounced it wrong for dozens of years. I have learned to ignore this and go on, because some people just can't do it right, just as some people are innumerate or are unable to tell time on a standard traditional clock. They function well in 99% of settings, but they'll never get it right. You can pretend that this is an insult and become churlish, but what will that get you? It won't fix it, it just makes you look like an a self-important jerk.
Move on.
I get all my news from writing on the internet so I personally don't GAF about how it is pronounced in any way whatsoever. If I am in a situation where I do have to pronounce it out loud and I do it in a way that offends the listener, then the listener better learn to deal with being offended, quickly.
For years, Harris has been telling people her name is pronounced 'comma-la, like the punctuation mark.'
Semicolon Powell?
Que*mal*a: how awful
cackle cackle
No one pronounces my last name correctly, I correct and move on. No big deal.
Carmela (Soprano) Harris.
She will always be Cackler to me.
"Nor should Harris be wanting people to feel affection for her. She should be wanting to impress them with her executive ability, grasp of policy, diplomacy..."
It's possible to win the presidency without being liked, but why would you make it more difficult?
I'm thinking of Nixon. But I think Nixon did try to be likable.
For those with a Boston accent, the correct pronunciation is Karmarlar.
In an Anglicized country what's so wrong about using Anglicized pronunciations?..."For once I don't blame white people for this." Way to go. A message of tolerance. Did any of the Black, Hispanic, or Chinese people in America ever mispronounce Kamala's name.....A rose by any other name would not be a lotus.
I know quite a few Hispanics, and they are more conservative than a lot of people think. I have a feeling that Que Mala is going to gain no small measure of traction in those quarters.
YOu live in America, you want to run America, you get an American pronunciation of your foreign name.
Don't like it? Too bad.
No one asked you to run for office. Same with our sainted immigrants who came here in the 20th century. You weren't forced to come here, you knew it was a white christian majority country when you came, so don't ask us to change our ways to make YOU feel more comfortable.
No. You do not get to pick how your name is pronounced.
Just like you do not get to pick your name.
The authority on how to pronounce your name is the person or persons who gave that name to you.
Usually your parents.
If your parents say that Kamala is pronounced "Cam-AY-lay" then it's darn well pronounced Cam-AY-lay.
"Do you like that hocus pocus?"
Fun trivia, the term hocus pocus was a mishearing/ mispronounciation of words. Non-catholic peasants in the Middle Ages overheard the priest saying "Hoc est enim corpus meum" at a critical point in the Eucharist liturgy and, not speaking Latin themselves, and being forbidden from the church/cathedral during the Eucharist but attempting to listen in from outside, "hocus pocus" was their best guess.
The priest says this phrase at the point when he breaks the bread and holds it aloft for adoration, and it is during this time of adoration that transubstantiation occurs- the essence of the bread becomes the essence of Christ. "Hocus pocus" were, therefore, the magic words that turn the bread to something else.
For years, Harris has been telling people her name is pronounced 'comma-la, like the punctuation mark.'
That's just her truth. Everybody gets to choose their own, I'm told. People pronounce it differently? Get over it.
You are correct that the owner decides.
We have French-Canadian friends whose parents pronounced the surname gahn-YOn, they pronounce it GAN-yon, and their children and grandchildren say GAG-non.
"For years, Harris has been telling people her name is pronounced 'comma-la, like the punctuation mark."
So it's Kamadashla? Cuz the dash don't be silent? Everybody's been getting it wrong.
When I see her I think "chlamydia". Urination becomes painful.
This is a common problem any time a word or name from a language other than English is imported into English or pronounced by speakers of American English. We naturally pronounce it according to English pronunciation patterns.
American English has a dominant stress pattern. DA-duh-DA-duh, or DA-duh-DA. MI-li-TA-ry. With of course some exceptions. com-MAN-der. an-NOUNCE-ment. For some reason speakers of American English naturally look at "Kamala" and assume KA-ma-LA.
My studies were mostly ancient languages including Hebrew and to a lesser extent Greek. It's hard sometimes to hear normal church folks read English translations of the Bible. I don't blame them one bit.
Monty Python with Raymond Luxury Yacht.
“Second, correcting people, even if they're not hitting your preference, feels priggish and stiff.”
Yet, my company DEI training started off with how miss pronouncing a person’s name is straight up racism. I work for an international company with so many dialects, most coworkers mispronounce names because they use their native dialects. We thought the training was more than priggish and stiff. We thought it was exactly the opposite of what we found cordial and empathetic. You shouldn’t harshly correct someone honestly trying to be polite and call you by your name even if they pronounce it wrong.
In an Anglicized country what's so wrong about using Anglicized pronunciations?
Please tell the NPR talking heads, who love to virtue signal by pronouncing names of Americans with the foreign pronunciations of their names, including their own, like Seeelvia Pogiohhhli.
Leland, I had the same kind of training. Intended to be helpful but wasn't. I get the problem, but it's not racist it's just people don't know how to do the unfamiliar until it's familiar. My daughter's name is almost never pronounced right even by people who have heard her or us use the right pronunciation. It's a French derived name that is pronounced as it looks but people add letters or don't know which road to take on the first syllable.
Please tell the NPR talking heads
=================
I was impressed with their enunciation of european composers names during music broadcast on radio
I am almost as white as you can get while still having melanin. My name Deirdre. My family has always pronounced it "Deer-Druh." (Deer like the animal, dru as in drugs, I always say). It is perpetually mispronounced and as it is exhausting to correct people I just go with it-- I know they're trying and they will never get it right.
I gave all my kids easy names.
This is not a uniquely non-white problem, and I am so sick of people acting like "normal life experience" is a huge trauma that people do to you deliberately.
'
Yeah, your parents picked a weirdly ethnic and hard to pronounce name that gets massacred for your whole life. Welcome to Gen X, toughen up.
"however a person pronounces their own name becomes the correct pronunciation"
Still fair to ask how and why. The correct Indian pronunciation of Kamala is perfectly feasible in American English, so Harris' insistence on something else seems needlessly inauthentic.
By the way, is she Indian now, or Black, or mixed race, or what? And we are clear, aren't we, that this upper-class woman has never been "marginalized" in any way, right?
Rick, your comment on Bible names is great. I just tell people to read confidently whatever way they choose to pronounce it. I'll sometimes take a pastoral route and pronounce it the way the reader did, to help them feel like they did good. And my thought is even the experts are likely pronouncing it differently than the original speakers anyhow so no reason to get quibbly about it.
30 years ago SNL did a funny sketch satirizing the over-pronunciation of spainih names like Nicaraugua and Honduras etc., complete with Rolled "Rs" and H for J. I'm now seeing Turkey spelt in a weird way with an umlaut.
THe idiot libtards then jump on the bandwagon to virtue signal and show they're following party line.
I have an Anglo-Saxon name that no one whose first language is Spanish can pronounce. The combination of consonants doesn't make sense to them. Pronounce your name, hope for the best, excuse people who can't say it the way you prefer.
Karma-la
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nWMp_z7Jnxw
It goes on too long. but its funny for about 2 minutes.
To answer the question above. Kamala is black when she wants to be, Indian when she wants to be, and good ol' murican when she wants.
She's a topping and a floor wax.
My name is Christina. I'm often called Trina. Whatever.
I have a speech impediment, too.
For mispronouncing an Hispanic name at a conference in Colorado once, a bunch of fascist leftists paused the conference for hours to convene by race, put me in the middle of a circle, and have "poems" read to me about my prejudice.
That's the Maoism of the Left. It was a long time ago. Now they di it to your kids regularly in public scnools.
Hagola can go bite another commie mentor's netherparts.
I’m inconsistent in how I pronounce my own first name. Sometimes I use a long E, other times a soft E. Not sure if it’s a mood thing or if it’s a circumstance thing.
I just had to pull over.
You know what name I never have trouble pronouncinng?
Trump!
Sad day when a pundit's best shot is to admonish the general public for supposedly mispronouncing the candidate's first name. Let's go back to talking about the extremely high-turnover within Harris' VP office - 92% turnover in 3 years, seems like a record, perhaps Kamala's most outstanding accomplishment as VP in Biden administration. Shine a light on that one, honey.
Every American named Irene who has ever lived has it worse than Kamala. Americans took one of the most beautiful names on earth, when pronounced as intended, and replaced it with EYE-REEN. It's sad, but it's also tough noogies. Im not trouncing into Bangladesh looking for people mispronouncing my name. Get over yourself!
The first Sith Lady, Karma-la, will inherit the Democrazi from Emperor Bidentine by his own account, Darth Joey.
The name nagging fits what has been the developing theme for the Democrats this year, long before the ascension.
That is the Democrat theme seems to be "How Dare You?"
in contrast to the RNC theme which seemed to be "Welcome to the Party"
But "How Dare You?" fits the party of college-credentialed women. The harridans are en vogue. Don't drive, don't say that, don't, don't, don't. The DNC should be interesting if they can't alter this them.
According to OED, "Kamala" is correctly pronounced in English as the combination of the Hindu words Kam (meaning ho) and ala (meaning bag.)
I wonder how this pronunciation flap goes over in Des Moines.
If a native speaker (English) mispronounces Kamala's name ---or misspells it--- that's considered a racial slur.
A non-native speaker who mispronounces her name, doesn't acknowledge pronouns, and who does this using a natural accent, and differing cultural clues; gets a pass and in fact, accusing a non-native speaker, using his or her natural-born accent, of anything, is itself racist.
Pronouns and Preferred Forms of Address are mandatory and subject to penalty, but only if you are White.
Such is the substance of Heels Up Harris.
What (name) can be Unburdened by what has been.
LOTUS>POTUS>NOT US
I usually try to refer to her as "Harris". It was easier to go with "Hillary" instead of "Clinton", unless it was clear who I was talking about, to avoid confusion with her husband.
A coworker of mine, an H-1 visa holder, had his first and last names transposed on his US documents, and found that the cost in time and effort to get it fixed was enormous. He was thereafter known familiarly by his last name among coworkers, and called Mr. First Name by the US government. Neither polysyllabic name was phonics friendly, both were mispronounced quite often, and he delighted in training those of us with Southern accents to get closer, as he found our speakin' to be hilariously different from his Oxford tones.
My Pittsburgh mother and Charlotte father left me confused as to how "pecan" is pronounced. I have several ways to choose from whenever the word gets used.
You dont have to over enunciate
My German surname (Prey) is pronounced more like "Pry" in German, "Prey" (as in bird of prey) in "English". I managed have managed to get through life with people getting it wrong. Once in a while a German speaker will recognize it.
White English-speakers must instantly and reproducibly give the correct pronunciation of names in any of 3,000 other languages, or be thought racist by the Left.
I'm reminded of the 1980's, when the earnest lefties went around pronouncing "El Salvador" or "Nicaragua" or "Daniel Ortega" with those ridiculous over-enunciated gringo-Spanish accents, and scolded you for pronouncing them in an ordinary American English fashion. They were comically unintelligible in both languages...
It also brings to mind the recent phenomenon of so-called "refugees" turning up on American or European shores, and rioting and trashing their taxpayer-provided quarters if the taxpayer-provided food in their mouths isn't to their liking. I'm not even necessarily talking about feeding pork to Muslims or beef to Hindus; I saw a story from England about Christians from South Sudan being quite disgruntled that they were being given terrible English food like beans on toast or fish and chips, instead of chickpea stew or whatever it is they eat down there.
I knew a number people named Auger, some of whom pronounced it the French way, others the English way. One had to ask.
A friend of a friend is Indian and back in 2020 she was deeply upset that the media was mispronouncing Kamala. Apparently names hold profound significance in their culture and can affect a person's destiny, so they must be pronounced correctly. We had to explain that the media wasn't wrong, Kamala chose her own pronounciation.
AlbertAnonymous, that’s even better than my pronunciation:
Commie-Lay.
JSM
PS: my real first name is quite possibly the literally most English of names. Yet native English speakers constantly mangle it, or even worse, assume I don’t want to be called by it and give me a nickname. I have moved around a lot and get exposed to a lot of regional accents, all of which mangle my name. It is not a racial thing. - j
When politicians start calling me "Mr Henry" instead of "John" I will start calling them "president Harris" etc
This overfamiliaty doesn't bother me much. The insistan on onesidedness does
John Henry
My family name is Hen3ry.
The 3 is silent. It causes so much confusion though that I generally just leave it out.
Juan Roberto Henry de Sanhez
Obama could never get the pronunciation of "Barack" right.
"It seems to me that however a person pronounces their own name becomes the correct pronunciation..."
Cool.
From now on it's Rrrah-bell'. And roll that R like a Starship engineer.
COUPmala.
Calling her Kamala is not a matter of disrespect.
We call prominent people by either their first or last name depending on which is more unusual so it's more clear exactly who we're talking about.
Donald and especially Joe are common first names while their last names are not. Kamala, on the other hand,is an unusual first name and Harris a common surname.
Christopher B said...
“The fundamental problem is there's no standard pronunciation of English words spelled using a Roman alphabet which makes it nearly impossible to establish an English phonetic spelling that will match the pronunciation of a non-English word.
"Ghoti" can be pronounced "fish", for given pronunciation of each letter or combination of letters.”
A simple summary of why that is the case: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fmL6FClRC_s
@Mosby: PS: my real first name is quite possibly the literally most English of names. Yet native English speakers constantly mangle it, or even worse, assume I don’t want to be called by it and give me a nickname.
Now I'm curious. Nigel? Percival? Rupert? Cyril? Ian? Alastair?
I'm listening to Harris's campaign speech to some group on Milwaukee from yesterday. At times the cried is chanting KA-MA-LA! KA-MA-LA!
Bunch of disrespectful racists...
While we're on the subject, there are plenty of Caitlins around, but the proper Irish pronunciation is Kathleen, not Cate-Lynn.
"Meade said...COUPmala."
The P is silent, like in swimming.
Blogger Lyssa said...
“My dad and my paternal grandfather could never agree on how to pronounce our Italian last name, which starts with a “Ch.” Dad always said (so I always corrected people to do so, too) that it was pronounced with a hard K (think Chianti). But grandpop, the son of the immigrants who brought it here, always said “Chee”. Grandpop also said “It-lee”, and described things from It-lee as “Talian”, which also drove my dad nuts.
That sounds very typical southern Italian / Sicilian - as most Italian Americans are.
In the southern Italian dialects, in casual speech, people often drop an “i” in the middle of words - “Itly”. And if a word begins with a vowel, they sometimes don’t pronounce that,too. There are unwritten rules that govern how these both work.
But even using formal grammar, the Sicilian word for Italian is Talianu, not Italiano.
Hassayamper, out of all those names, only Rupert is possibly Anglo-Saxon. But none of those are mine.
I will stop now so that no one figures me out by asking until I stop.
JSM
I usually enjoy hearing my English first name pronounced (mis-pronounced?) by non-US native speakers.
For example, I never correct French speakers when they pronounce my name using their native accents or standard French pronunciation rules. I would consider that to be arrogant, "ugly American" behavior, and I expect they would, too.
Regarding the use of "Kamala" instead of more formal methods of address, I'd say 90% of the objections are simply attempts at intimidating or embarrassing conservatives. "Donald" and "Joe" seem commonly used for #45 and #46.
By the way, maybe we should demand that Lefties refer to "Michelle" as Ms. Michelle Robinson. Isn't it terribly demeaning to identify her using solely her first name or by her husband's last name?
Althouse, my apologies for calling you "Ann" all those times. I did not know the preference, so I plead ignorance.
As for using "Kamala" to refer to our VP, given she sells merch with "KAMALA" on it, I sense the critics protest too much.
And I agree the pronunciation of your name is whatever you say it is, as long as it is not obvious trolling.
Okay John Mosby, I'm guessing your name is Menzies and almost no one ever gets the pronunciation right.
"... correcting people, even if they're not hitting your preference, feels priggish and stiff. It's just not a good way to build a following."
That's why I don't follow the priggish pronoun parade.
There’s something insidious about having to feel affection for someone whom no one voted for. I mean, the Dems never even primary’d Biden. She was selected for the job. Affection for her has a “Dear Leader” vibe that feels very unAmerican.
An Indian friend of mine told me one day that his daughter (then 5) had an American accent, "She says her name like you do" was how he explained it.
Old and slow- haha! “Mingus!” That would be great, but it would also be Scottish!
Rocco: in my mom’s Sicilian/Calabrese family and my predominantly Neapolitan neighborhood growing up, the “c”s were pronounced as “g”s. The Standard Italian hard “c” (pronounced like English “K” and usually spelled with “ch”) was hard “g” like “goose.” The Standard Italian soft “c” (pronounced like English “ch” in “cheese “) was soft “g” like “page.” So “Francesco,” instead of “Frank-chess-ko,” was “Frahn-Jess-go.”
Is that what you grew up around?
One of my mom’s first cousins had 16 years of Catholic education which included rigorous English and French, but not modern standard Italian. When she went to Italy for vacations in the 60s and 70s, she was speaking Southern dialect as of 1905, and came off sounding like Mae West or James Cagney would to us!
JSM
We don't get many Camelas around here.
Just for fun, go to Google Translate and tell it to translate "horrible president" from English to Finnish. https://translate.google.com/?sl=en&tl=fi&text=horrible%20president%0A%0A&op=translate
john mosby said...
"One of my mom’s first cousins had 16 years of Catholic education which included rigorous English and French, but not modern standard Italian. When she went to Italy for vacations in the 60s and 70s, she was speaking Southern dialect as of 1905, and came off sounding like Mae West or James Cagney would to us!"
Indeed. I once heard a linguist say that arguably you are more likely to hear "traditional" Napoletano spoken in portions of New Jersey or Argentina than in Naples itself.
@ john mosby
The short answer to your question is: for the verb "eat", I heard "mancia" more than "mangia".
In Cincinnati, Sicilian Americans disproportiantely came from Palermo and nearby Termini Immerese; southern Italians from Campania and nearby.
I didn't hear a lot growing up. Usually when I did it was at special events when the older folks might speak an ancestral language amongst the group - be it Southern Italian, Sicilian, German, or others.
*Althouse*:
Vice President Harris’s first name was always pronounced Ka-MAH-La when she was S.F. D.A., California Attorney General, and U.S. senator representing the state of California in the upper chamber of Congress. She wants her name pronounced like Pamela. No. It’s Ka-MAH-La Harris.
Her abject pronunciational move is so politically and opportunistically transparent as to be ridiculous.
I’m calling her Kamala the regular way she pronounced it before she expressed aspirations for high national office.
(You once told me you preferred to addressed as Althouse. That’s cool. A kind a brand management thing, considering.)
Nite.
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