The Poltics of Naming

When a group of 20-something girls congregate together, the discussion always veers towards baby names - what names we have picked out for our hypothetical kids regardless of our marital status. And my contribution to this conversation is invariably, "I will pick a name that is pronounced the same in Urdu and English so my kid won't have a weird name complex."

This is because I suffer from a so-called "name complex" because (Cosmo Confession) my name is actually pronounced Mur-ium, not the Anglicized Westernized version: Mary-am. When I was a teenager, I had no problem introducing myself to white folks as Mary-am. I didn't think twice about the identitarian politics associated with assimilating ones name to ease social interactions with mainstream society. I just wanted white folks to have an easier time with my foreign name, and so I was "Mary-am Qureshi." In fact, my Carlisle friends would tell me, "I love how your mom says your name: Murrrrium! Murrrrium!!" as they rolled their "r's" as if my mother was a sassy, sharp-tongued, South American tango dancer. Back then, I didn't have the cojones to say, "Yo, my mama says it the right way!" Instead, with a subservient smile, I would say, "I guess it's cool."

When I got to college, though, the politics of assimilating ones name became more complex. At Carlisle School, the vast majority was of Southern white people, whose only interaction with Pakistan or its people had been through a copy of National Geographic at the local library (sigh in the pre-9/11 days). At UNC, though, brown folks abounded - there were academics in every department.

When I took a women's study course my junior year of college, I discovered two horrifying facts: 1) my professor was a short, thin Indian lady named Dr. Chatterjee and 2) class participation abounded and this was just the type of subject where I'd be continually raising my hand. The first time anyone wanted to participate, Dr. Chatterjee would say, "Your name, please?" Even though I really wanted to participate in some of the riveting discussions about the gender politcs of the egg and the sperm and how scientific language made menstruation seem so wasteful, I held back for fear of how to say my name. Should I say "Mary-am" to appease my classmates or "Murrium" for the Indian professor? Now, at this point, dear blog reader, I can literally hear the groans from people like Amar or Erik Peterson as they collectively sigh, and say, "JESUS, why is this such an issue for you Mary-am? I mean, seriously, who cares? Can't you make fun of sick children or the homeless some more?" And in my defense, I can only say, yes, this may seem trivial, but it still haunts me to this day, and the egalitarian nature of self-publishing on the Internet allows me to post absolute shit if I want to on this blog.

In the end, I decided to raise my hand and participate in a discussion about women working "pink collar" jobs in the West Indies for Western companies and pronounced my name is "Murrium." I figured that a women's studies professor whose particular interests are in colonization and post-colonial gender studies would notice me selling out to Western hegemony.

However, the problem persisted, especially in medicine, where every rotation I had was filled with some brown person. I got confused literally at the start of every rotation. And so, I came up with some general rules to live by:

1) Say "Mary-am" to patients because usually they are small town white folks who have never seen a Pakistani and would get really confused if I said my name the right way.
2) If there are only white doctors around and white students, pronounce it "Mary-am."
3) If the doctor is Pakistani/Indian and everyone else is white, then pronounce it "Murrium" because the highest authority figure who is grading you matters the most, and you don't want them to think you are an Oreo (white on the inside, brown on the outside).
4) If the team is a mix of Pakistanis/Indians and white people, pronounce your name both ways depending upon whether the person is brown or white. I have to make sure that the other members of the team can't hear me during each introduction though. That leads to confusion within the team and no one ever saying your name because they don't know which way is the right way and are too lazy/embarrassed to ask. This happened to me during my pediatrics rotation in my 3rd year when the team was a mix of Bengalis, white people, Hispanic people, Indians, and Persians.

And so, this is what happens to you when you are a first generation American - I have now realized that straddling both your parents' culture and being an American is not as easy as they make it seem in heartwarming immigrant movies or that documentary they show you when you visit the Statue of Liberty. It involves a lot of complicated, minor and major compromises with your identity continually in flux as you negotiate the Old World and the New.

--By Mariam, who is so sorry she hasn't blogged in so long, but life got in the way.