“Give your daughters difficult names.
Names that command the full use of the tongue.
My name makes you want to tell me the truth.
My name does not allow me to trust anyone
who cannot pronounce it right.”
- Warsan Shire
I always knew when my name came up for roll call in class, the first day. There was a pause, a hesitation; enough time for me to offer my name so the teacher didn’t have to think hard about how to say it. This never happened to anyone else in my classes, at least through high school; I was often the only non-white person in the classroom without a Western name. My name is straightforward, completely phonetic, with none of the Hindi consonants that don’t match neatly with English ones. Too frequently I was asked for a nickname, something “easier”. I grew up making these concessions, not knowing what else to do. I never thought I had the right to insist on my own name, not when the adults in the room were the ones pushing back.
In Indian households, it’s not uncommon that a nickname - a pet name - is completely unrelated to someone’s full name. Pet names come from endearments, favorite songs, popular references. Mine does sound like my name, but it was never something I would have offered to these people demanding a “simpler” name. They wouldn’t have understood, and anyway, it wouldn’t have fit their demand. It’s not John, short for Jonathan, or Bill, short for William. It’s not ordinary or expected. The nicknames I received in school and then, in the workplace, were most often shortenings of my name, a single syllable. Pri became the one I defaulted to, that I gave to those uncomfortable teachers and employers and co-workers. They often tried to gift me their own nickname, Priya, which is in fact another name altogether - perhaps one they had already encountered. Some even resisted when I corrected them; they insisted they knew someone else with my name who had used this short form. I was and continue to be annoyed by the audacity of assumption that comes with non-Anglicized names. The liberties strangers take to make themselves comfortable astound me. In contrast to these frustrations, though, my close friends had their own names for me, as I often did for them; born out of love, intimacy, friendship - not convenience.
I started a new job last year, and I offered no abbreviations to my name. Each time I’ve received an email incorrectly using my name, or someone says it wrong in conversation, I immediately and directly correct it, without any apologies or concessions. It is still a slightly uncomfortable thing for me, to insist on my own name. I try to push that feeling away when it comes; I don’t need another reason to feel self-conscious in my own skin. I only wish I had known that when I was younger.
I saw this quote on social media a few years ago. It is a section of Warsan Shire’s ‘The Birth Name’, published in 2011. She writes about how she used to wish for a softer name, an easier name; a sentiment I can wholly relate to. My name would always other me in my youth, defining me as a foreign quantity despite my American accent. But in these lines, Shire makes this a virtue, a password for entry into our lives. I love this idea. My name allows me a privilege so many don’t have, to know whom to trust with only an introduction. How many people can say that?
While writing this, I thought I should learn a little more about Warsan Shire. I only knew these words of hers, but I think of them often. Warsan Shire is, by any standard, a remarkable person. At the age of 34, she has published her first book of poetry, she has won multiple awards and accolades, and her work has been quoted and used by Beyoncé and Benedict Cumberbatch. She was the inaugural Young Poet Laureate of London and the youngest member of the Royal Society of Literature when she joined in 2018. She is from a Somalian family and grew up in the U.K. She published ‘The Birth Name’ at 22.
When I learned Warsan Shire’s name, I wondered if her surname was a happy coincidence. In an interview published by The Guardian, Shire is speaking with another poet, Bernardine Evaristo. Shire says that in Somalian culture, everything is poetry: “…in my home, I was around people just reciting poetry, all willy-nilly. We call it “gabay” in Somalia, and it’s used when a child is born, when somebody dies, when we go to a wedding, when you’re courting somebody, when you’re cursing somebody, when you’re beating your children – there’s something for every single activity in life.” She says she didn’t realize poetry could be a career until she saw a poet perform in her teens. ‘Shayar’ is the Urdu word for poet, a word I’ve known my whole life. Arabic is spoken in Somalia, which shares roots with Urdu. I wonder if being a poet was Warsan Shire’s manifest destiny in some small way.
