The View from a Drawbridge

Where I work, we usually only discover that there’s a new employee when a new name pops up on the work schedule. Such is the level of communication around here. It’s disconcerting when stranger walks in with no prior introduction, and you’re supposed to spend the day training them one on one.

That alone is irritating enough, but I have been noticing another irritating trend, and it’s one that I probably take more personally than others do. We have been hiring a lot of people with last names even more complicated than mine of late. That’s perfectly fine, but the annoying bit is that when that happens, our supervisor puts their first name on the schedule rather than their surname, as he does with all the rest of us.

That straight up pisses me off. Yes, some names don’t exactly trip off the tongue, but that doesn’t mean that you get to be dismissive of them. “Your name is too hard to figure out, so from now on you’re just Sam.”

Like that person is a dog. Like that person doesn’t deserve the respect of having everyone learn and know their surname. If you don’t put it on the schedule, most of us will never know it, and that person will be forever Sam to us. It’s insulting. It’s rude. And frankly, in many cases, it’s prejudiced. “You have a really weird Indian name (for example), so we’ve decided that you don’t get to use it.”

My whole life, my last name has been misspelled and mispronounced by pretty much everyone. Heck, I’ve even been known to misspell it myself when I’m really tired. But “at least” it’s Western European, so most people are willing to give it the ol’ college try, you know? That’s enough for me, in singular encounters. Now, if someone continues to mess it up when interacting with me daily, then I get annoyed. Learn it. I had to learn yours, Mr. Smith. You can do it if you try.

My experience pales in comparison to the ones that people with names so “ethnic” as to be incomprehensible to the average American have. But it’s adjacent enough to make me very sensitive to this issue. I try really hard to learn last names. And if I’m not sure how they are pronounced, I ask. If they are really a challenge, I tell them that saying them correctly is really important to me, so if I get them wrong, please do correct me. Because everyone deserves to be called by their name, unless they genuinely don’t want to be. (I’d be squirming if my last name were Trump right about now, for example.)

I’m not saying that I call everyone by their last name when talking to them, if we are on a first name basis. But on schedules and documents and the like, of course I use surnames. And even if you allow me to call you Sam, I want you to know that I know your last name, and have taken the time to really learn it.

One year in college, I had a classmate with the last name Reksopotranto. It had even more letters than my own! Once I mastered the pronunciation, I really enjoyed repeating that name. I’d whisper it to myself. The funny thing is, I didn’t know her all that well. She was so into her boyfriend that she barely came up for air. I doubt we exchanged two words that year. I’m sure she’d be amused to know that I fell in love with her surname.

They say that once you name a thing, it becomes real. That’s powerful. We don’t get to rename people for our own convenience. It’s disgusting that they often did so at Ellis Island. It’s outrageous that it happened to slaves and also to children forced into indigenous boarding schools. These human beings are already real. They have names. Those names were chosen by their families, or in some cultures they were chosen by themselves, unless they were abandoned at birth. It is who they are. Depriving someone of their name discounts them.

I must admit, if I stumble upon a new employee’s last name, I sneak into our schedule on the computer (which I’m not, strictly speaking, allowed to alter), and I swap their first name for their surname. And once I do, surprise! It stays there, and the new person becomes identified by it. Now, is that so hard?

Welcome to the team. You may require training, but you are on equal footing in all other ways. At least as long as I’m here.

For fun, I just looked up the world’s longest surname. According to Wikipedia, it is the one below. And of course, it has multiple spellings, as people have made various mistakes on documents over the years. But here’s one version:

Wolfeschlegel­steinhausen­bergerdorff­welche­vor­altern­waren­gewissenhaft­schafers­wessen­schafe­waren­wohl­gepflege­und­sorgfaltigkeit­beschutzen­vor­angreifen­durch­ihr­raubgierig­feinde­welche­vor­altern­zwolfhundert­tausend­jahres­voran­die­erscheinen­von­der­erste­erdemensch­der­raumschiff­genacht­mit­tungstein­und­sieben­iridium­elektrisch­motors­gebrauch­licht­als­sein­ursprung­von­kraft­gestart­sein­lange­fahrt­hinzwischen­sternartig­raum­auf­der­suchen­nachbarschaft­der­stern­welche­gehabt­bewohnbar­planeten­kreise­drehen­sich­und­wohin­der­neue­rasse­von­verstandig­menschlichkeit­konnte­fortpflanzen­und­sich­erfreuen­an­lebenslanglich­freude­und­ruhe­mit­nicht­ein­furcht­vor­angreifen­vor­anderer­intelligent­geschopfs­von­hinzwischen­sternartig­raum

Even I would have been hard-pressed to give this person the respect that he and his name deserved by learning its pronunciation. I suspect he got that a lot. But someone in his family tree, at least, had a sense of humor. I urge you to read the Wikipedia article, because the name, when translated, apparently tells a really fascinating and bizarre story. It involves wolves and spaceships. I kid you not.

Anyway, I may not know your name, Dear Reader, but I’m awfully glad you stopped by. Please do come again! You’re always welcome.