Audience Corrects Interviewer On Mispronouncing Issa Rae's Name

[hisjulliet]

Audience corrects interviewer who mispronounced Issa Rae’s name during their discussion at CultureCon. pic.twitter.com/COL7ioyevI
- Pop Crave (@PopCrave) October 8, 2023
When an interviewer pronounces Issa's name wrong, some people in the audience were quick to point out to the interviewer on how to pronounce her name correctly.  The interviewer then

Comments

[836am]

Names are important, and it's so aggravating when someone doesn't make the effort to learn your name and/or acts as if you're making a big deal out of nothing when you correct them.

[crash31]

There’s a nurse I’ve worked with now for MONTHS who has been calling me by the wrong name (not even close) and I refuse to answer her when she does it, another nurse noticed her calling me the wrong name and called her out for it. It’s so disrespectful. Mind you, there are zero similarities between me and the person she is calling me (literally one is black, the other is white on top of a multitude of other reasons why she should know us)

[dbwayfarer]

Yep, people always scrunch up their face with elaborate distaste/confusion like I'm asking them to read the Voynich Manuscript or something- I could always tell when a teacher got to my name on the roster just from their face. And they'll be like, exaggeratedly mispronouncing what is honestly not a hard name to read even for someone who only knows English - just dramatically making it much more complicated by inserting random letters/sounds that would not possibly be there, like letters/vowels that simply do not exist in my name & no combination of others that would possibly be pronounced like the random sounds they're making to the point it feels like they're just being passive aggressive, or even just blatantly rude shit like just replacing the last half of my name with "blah" or "something" and then acting like it's super cute and clever

[archersangel]

....just dramatically making it much more complicated by inserting random letters/sounds that would not possibly be there, like letters/vowels that simply do not exist in my name & no combination of others that would possibly be pronounced like the random sounds they're making ....

People do that with my last name, which isn't THAT hard if you look at it and pronounce it carefully. I don't bother correcting people, unless they ask if it's correct.
However, I give them a sunny-sounding "That's right." (like encouraging a child) when they pronounce it correctly, but with a question mark at the end because they're not sure.

[hoodoo]

yeah theres a difference between an honest mistake and being an asshole

[steffi_333]

And it’s not like it’s hard to figure it out. Just ASK. If I’m interviewing someone and they have an unfamiliar name the first thing I’ll do is ask them if I’m pronouncing it properly. It takes like TWO SECONDS.

[patenipat]

The number of times I've been called a "grammar Nazi" for quietly pointing out how to pronounce my or a client's name correctly....
To then pronounce the name exaggeratedly correctly or extra wrongly after pointing it out is also very... mature.

[artsyfartsy01]

god I know. I've learned to introduce myself as "Hi, I'm 'name', spelled n-a-m-e" and sometimes people still get it wrong. I have an arabic name but am not arabic, and the amount of ppl who want to know exactly WHY and HOW that is the case.. insane. why are you the 7th Jessica I've met this week? answer me that!
I've had teachers just call me a whole other name for weeks until I got fed up and started calling thém another name. and then suddenly they remember! funny how that works