name, dei, inclusive, academia
Have you ever had to correct how people pronounce your name? Or, have you ever wondered how to pronounce someone else’s names, or feared offending or creating an awkward situation when they cannot recognize your pronunciation of their names? As our department becomes increasingly diverse, the answer is probably yes for at least one, if not both, questions.
Names bear significance to one’s cultural and familial identity, and pronouncing someone’s name correctly would make them feel seen and valued [1,2]. On the other hand, mispronunciation of names, intentionally or unintentionally, could lead to bias, exclusion, and even a long-lasting impact on self-perception, especially for students of colour in education settings [2,3]. As an example, in 2020, Phuc Bui Diem Nguyen, a Vietnamese-American college student was told repeatedly to “Anglicize” her name by a professor because he found it “offensive-sounding” in English [4]. However, the microaggression doesn’t disappear with more accolades or seniority — Arvind Narayanan, a professor of computer science at Princeton University, shared that while his academic work was highly visible, his name was not. Reflecting upon the microaggressions from jokes to misspelled name tags, he realized that a “foreign-sounding” name had a tangible impact on his career: citations of his work, invitations to presentations, and even job opportunities [5].
While there has been increasing awareness of pronouncing people’s names correctly across the U.S. higher education system, the department of Biostatistics (and to a large extent, the University of Washington) is rather lacking in terms of resources and guidelines, a stark contrast to the diverse representation of names in its students, faculty, and staff body. As an example, the company NameCoach offers an integrated tool to Canvas and is designed to support proper pronunciations of students’ names and pronouns (see e.g., [6]). However, UW Canvas does not innately support this toolkit. In addition, even within the UW community, the economics department maintains an unofficial (and probably incomplete) list of name pronunciations for their faculty and staff [7]. This pronunciation guide was motivated by the pronouncing names of the incoming faculties back in 2013; however, the concept of a pronunciation directory applies to the broader community as well.
Here are some pointers to fight against the “familiar name bias”:
Recognize that while a perfect pronunciation of everyone’s name is hard, if not impossible, a first-order approximation by giving it your best try (after consulting with others!) would mean a lot to your colleagues/peers/students!
While NameCoach is not supported by the UW Canvas, an easy workaround for instructors (and TAs could help setting up this as well) is to create a discussion post for everyone to introduce themselves. For instance, simply ask students to introduce themselves and share their pronouns/names (including phonetic spelling/pronunciation) if they are comfortable doing so. While phonetic spellings might be hard and far from universal, one could also take advantage of online name pronunciation sites such as namedrop.
The department should allow, normalize, and encourage adding phonetics and/or a link to the pronunciations of names for its faculty, staff, and students. For instance, incorporating a new module on how to add such information (e.g., a namedrop link) during new students’ orientation could be immensely helpful. In addition, an online directory would prevent the awkward situation of having to repeatedly ask for the correct pronunciation when faced with a less familiar name.
During orientation, the department should also explicitly point out that UW allows students to identify with the names they would like to be called in the academic setting (see https://registrar.washington.edu/students/preferred-names/). In addition, efforts should be made to ensure that preferred names are respected and used in day-to-day interactions. (advice from Prof. Arvind Narayanan) When you read a good paper with an author you don’t know, especially if they’re junior, take a minute to look them up, get to know their work, cite them, and keep them in mind for events you organize. In short, remember the name!
Finally, while this piece focused much on the pronunciation aspect, non-anglicized names are often prone to spelling mistakes as well. There are only 26 letters in the English alphabet, and making sure you spell their name correctly is a piece of extremely low-hanging fruit of the equity and inclusiveness tree.