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

[skyler_white_yo]

I’ve had people mispronunce my name when they first meet me, and I politely correct them. However there have been people I’ve been working with for years still mispronounce my name and it’s tiresome. Depending on my mood, I will just ignore it or give an annoyed correction.

I hate when people say “oh I’ll never remember that, I’ll just call you…”. I worked with a poor guy who had a common name, but the emphasis was on a different syllable. Quite a few people pulled the “oh I’ll call you…” it was really disheartening to see.

[tilney]

Oh god that's the worst? You don't just get to choose what to call someone, ugh.

[skyler_white_yo]

Sadly, it was probably a race thing, he was black, and the white ladies just couldn’t be bothered to say “Dah-veed” instead of “Day-vid”.

[evenstarnikki]

omg that's literally the name i guessed in my head.

i'd never heard it pronounced "dah-veed" before the show NCIS where it was someone's surname. i'd still assume "day-vid" upon reading it, but if someone TELLS me how their name is pronounced then that's how i'll bloody pronounce it.

[2_on]

my anxiety is so bad that i can't imagine having to present someone and not looking up how to say their name beforehand

[screamingintune]

tbh it seems like a no-brainer if you're in a professional setting like that to look into it. I feel like that's one thing baseball commentators do actually pretty well, there's a lot of difficult baseball names and they always seem to know the proper way to say it. it doesn't take a LOT of research to do this if you're in some kind of entertainment job, honestly

[afeelingunacted]

I work in a creative field and even though I have common names the press people made me record a little audio thing of me pronouncing my own name they can give out to people moderating. I'm sure they do the same in sports, especially because commentators have to use their names so much.

It's a nice touch and actually quite common now!

I wonder if Issa is so famous now they just assumed the mod could look it up.

[yami_no_hoshi]

exactly. just watch 5 minutes of her show, she has the same name as her character! I would be triple checking everything if I was interviewing someone.

[tilney]

My absolute pet peeve and a sign of total disrespect. Double that if this person is being paid to interview Issa, that's just basic due diligence, bar is on the ground level. Do some research. Otherwise just ask and make an effort to remember. Jesus.

[dadeepish]

Mispronounciation is unacceptable and I have zero time for it. Ask someone and if you're unsure, ask them to repeat it/say it back to them--but get it right.

Less important but still something that bothers me, I go by a shortened version of my first name everywhere except my CV (signature, answering the phone, signing emails) and proper documents and people will still default to my full name. Just listen/read for a second!

[fairyfloss_love]

Oh, I hate it so much. I have a longer last name that has Polish roots but is perfectly easy to pronounce if you take a moment to read it properly. But people just do not bother and I find it quite disrespectful.
I recently attended court and the judge (!) really messed up my name pretty bad every time she spoke to me/about me. As the claimant you would think she would pay more attention but she was horrible biased so I guess there is that...

[screamingintune]

my last name is incomprehensibly French for the American tongue; I have really stopped bothering to correct people as long as they find my prescription or whatever reason I'm having to give my name. multiple silent letters are a problem and mine begins AND ends with them.

but it's not nearly as obnoxious as people who have to do deal with people saying their first names wrong, that's really irksome.