Names Matter: Why Respectful Recognition is Crucial in Competitions

Written by: Anahitha Raffe Sofia

Edited by: Ameya Vathanan “First name starts with an A, last name starts with a B.”

The TSA regionals were held on February 20th at the Western Regionals in Appalachian State. Out of 82 competitive teams, AK came home with 56 medals: 15 Bronze, 19 Silver, and 21 Golds. We also came home with something far less rewarding: a taste of cultural insensitivity: a disregard for the very students whose hard work and dedication made those gold medals possible.

For a competition based on innovating new ideas for our future, you would have thought they would enforce inclusion better and properly recognize everyone. But no. While the organizers did ask a couple of kids how their names were pronounced, most were called out by their initials, and even more humiliating, with their names spelled out. And all of these were always students from diverse ethnicities and beautiful foreign names. Most of them weren’t even hard to pronounce - the traditionally Caucasian or ‘English’ names some students had were much more complex.

But this is nothing new. I still remember my first day of school in the US, when I was paired up with a student from the same background as mine who introduced herself with her actual name, then said, ‘But everyone calls me Sam!” As I went through high school, I encountered this again and again. Ethnic names were shortened and, in some cases, even completely replaced by an English one. And again and again I faced pressure from friends and even family to find one for myself.

Your name is your identity. It is one of your birthrights, the sounds associated with you. To have people replace it with something that is ‘easier’ for them is a blatant form of disrespect and should be viewed as such. I would rather have my name completely butchered any day to be assigned a different one by people who pass through very briefly in my life. Mispronunciation can contribute to feelings of exclusion or disregard, but taking an ‘English’ nickname forces you to erase yourself and fit in a mold forced onto you by a culture that is not accepting of who you are.

TSA was not the first place where this was seen, though this was the one that impacted many most deeply. Competing and winning in the US always comes with this everyday casual load of cultural insensitivity. But just because it's prevalent doesn't mean it's right. We need change in our communities, however small it is. More than ever, it is important in today's world, where basic structures of our society, such as DEI programs, are being debated.

I urge you to speak out in your communities and work towards this change. I call on event organizers to prioritize cultural sensitivity and respect in the future, encouraging a more inclusive environment where all participants feel valued. Let us be a society that recognizes everyone equally, makes every voice heard, and has every name called.