What’s in a Name?
This blog post is a transcript of an Interlude I released back on January 23, 2020. It’s always a relevant conversation, and a topic that’s very meaningful to me, so I thought of sharing this as a blog post as well.
Other than the intro and conclusion, I haven’t altered anything. I’d love to hear your feedback on this if you’d like to share! Thank you. — Pav.
Recently, one of my online and real life best friends Tony Coppola asked me to talk about my name. I considered it, and then put it in my back pocket for a little while. I thought about whether I wanted to, or whether to leave it alone. Talking about my name instills lots of anxiety in me. I like the topic. I like the question, I like that someone took enough interest in the etymology of my name to ask about it - so it wasn’t something I was going to neglect. I just didn’t know how to approach the topic.
My full first name is Pawanjit. It’s a mouthful, and it’s 8 letters long. There are all kinds of phonetic anomalies with regard to the English language in this name. For starters, the W is actually pronounced as a V. That’s because in the Punjabi language, the W sound and the V sound are interchangeable - they are the same - based on dialect. There’s no exhale on the P, so sometimes it sounds like a B. The T at the end is soft (like a TH) and the i in Jit is long, like a double E. When I was in grade school, my name was not Pavanjeet, it was Pawanjit. Many of the friends I have that have been in my life since then still call me that, even though my name has evolved in many ways since then. And that’s simply because old habits die hard, and that name has become a part of my identity.
My name is a compound word made up of two parts. Pavan means wind, as in one of the 4 elements: earth, wind, fire, water. And Jeet means victory. Many names of Sikh or Punjabi origin are made up of compound words. Deep, Preet, inder, are some common suffixes, and Har, Nav, Gur are some common prefixes that one might come across. I’m pretty sure that these compound names were a trend in the 80s - as they are not really seen with such prevalence anymore.
Growing up, I didn’t like my name. I was born and raised in Toronto - in a relatively multicultural neighbourhood. In school, there were plenty of people who looked like me, and shared the same cultural background. I didn’t ever feel out of place, although my family did face racism at times in the city. I generally don’t have many negative memories from my youth with respect to this. I do understand that that wasn’t the case for everyone, and I respect and empathize with those experiences.
My name was never something that was really made fun of, but I don’t remember many people ever being able to pronounce it correctly. It was romanized incorrectly, it was long, it was filled with phonology that was uncommon and foreign in a room full of Sophia’s, Mary’s and Paul’s.
It was always butchered. At some point, Pawanjit stuck, and I began to associate that as the correct pronunciation of my name. That became how I introduced myself, and when there was a supply teacher, I began to sweat in anticipation of having to speak up to incorrectly correct my name during morning attendance. Pawanjit became my identity. This was now me. If I met someone new or started a new class, that’s who I was. This continued up until the end of high school. As I got older, it went from embarrassing to annoying, having to correct my name to every person I met. It was a prescribed scenario, with every new interaction starting with at least 5 minutes of name discussion. I became bored of it, and it became a topic I despised.
Since being very young, I experienced repetitive name change. When I was little, too little to remember, my name was Penny. This name stuck for a long time with many people and sometimes when I see those that I haven’t seen since I was little, they instinctively call me Penny. I found it to be endearing. Later in life, when I did volunteer work on the long term care floor at the hospital, many of the patients, predominantly Italian, re-named me Paola…since it was easier for them to pronounce, brought a smile to their faces when I would respond to this new alias, and I received this name affectionately. My cousin teased the fact that I kept trying to shorten my 8 letter name, and so she named me Penelope - also 8 letters - but much easier to pronounce, she would say in jest.
When I was in University, I decided to drop the “Jit” from my name for more common encounters. It was now Pawan. It was not a perfect solution, however, because I discovered that when I said Pawan, many people…an absurd amount of people…heard Helen. And now I had a new challenge.
I started working after university, and the name Pawan stuck, although some still found it to be a challenge. My name was always a topic of anxiety for me. Introductions were always difficult, and I wished I had just found a quick and easy name that I wouldn’t have to explain. I soon shortened my name even further to Pav. I played around with other short P names - like Pam, but Pav just seemed to work. I waffled back and forth between names for quite some time…and when I went to teachers college, I decided to try and have people pronounce my name the way it was intended to be pronounced, and that worked for some time. But I was experiencing the same sorts of anxieties when meeting new people - I hated the conversation being so focused on one aspect of me. That spotlight, I was never comfortable with.
Now, in my career and personal life, I have given up with explaining my name. People call me whatever they want to call me, and I’m really fine with it. If people ask me, I explain. If they don’t ask, I don’t feel inclined to get into it. As long as it is with affection, I will answer to just about anything. At work and in my personal life, there are people that call me Pav, Pawan, Pavan and Wander. It works, and it doesn’t bother me one bit.
Some time ago, I started to experience people encouraging me to use my full name. It has meaning, it’s your heritage, people would say. You should be proud of your name, and what it represents, they would argue. This used to irk me. I would receive their feedback, and agree with them. But, at the same time, I remembered my youth, when my name was constantly annihilated, to the point where I was butchering it myself simply to avoid the attention it brought.
I remember the anxiety during the first day of school. I remembered having to introduce myself, and then having to repeat it, or come up with teaching devices, such as “it’s pronounced OVEN with a P.” I hated it. I still hate it. I never wanted my name to draw attention, and I see this with so many students today. Sometimes I correctly pronounce a students name, and then they correct me to an incorrect pronunciation, simply because that’s what their friends know them as.
In my opinion, names are a tricky thing. Most of us did not choose our names. We didn’t have the privilege of picking something that was suited for our personalities, and something that easily rolls off our tongues. And then we have to sit through someone telling us that we should have pride in our names. I don’t mind the name I was given, I just hated the discomfort that came with it. At the start of every year since I started teaching, I made it a point to ensure I was always pronouncing my students' names correctly. I would ask them what they prefer to be called. I would ask them to give me the correct pronunciation, and to constantly correct me if I was mispronouncing it. I wasn’t given this liberty when I was growing up. Maybe I would have had a better experience if my teachers were more concerned about how they were saying my name. I do tell my students to be proud of the heritage from which their name comes, but I don’t press upon it. If a student prefers a different name, something shorter or easier, just to avoid the anxiety that comes with a unique or difficult name, I allow it and I respect it. It’s something that I can empathize with. Perhaps later in their life, they will come to terms with it, or maybe they won’t. It’s really part of their journey.
I’m not angry that my name was always mispronounced. Times have really changed and I have seen that people are much more mindful now than in the past. I am confident that my students won’t have it as hard as I did. Exposure to names of a variety of cultures are far more prevalent, and people are making a greater effort to say them correctly. I had bad experiences, but I know that teachers today are doing so much more to be respectful to their students, and they would never knowingly butcher names to make their own lives easier. I used to have teachers suggest shorter names to me, but I don’t see that as something as prevalent now. I know it happens, but not to the same extent as it used to. I’m sure that many might argue this point, and I would agree with you that it likely happens more than I’m aware of, but I haven’t seen it as much as I used to when I was young and being affected by it.
I don’t know that I necessarily tried to solve anything in this interlude…I wanted to share an experience, and give a little background information about my name. Thank you Tony for the suggestion, and I welcome all other suggestions for Interlude, or blog topics as well! I’d love to hear YOUR name story! When this blog post was released as an interlude over a year ago, it garnered so much interaction on Twitter, and it was really nice to hear about the stories that people shared about their names. Please share your story with us!
