Why Getting Your Colleague’s Name Right Matters…
written by Fausia S. Abdul – GEFF Board Member – PhD researcher on peacebuilding in the Middle East and Afghanistan, radicalization, and women’s rights at the University of Vienna – and employed at the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Throughout my life, I have heard puzzling variations of my first name ranging from Sascha, Sophia, Valeria, Fasha, Felicia, Fouzia, Fawzy, to Fausia with the stress on the first part of the name. It was even more fun in school: Fausia became Fuchsia the plant (and at times the cruder version of that), to ‘Foutje,’ which is Dutch for ‘mistake’. The joys of middle school. I just reminded myself my name meant ‘victory’ and that was all that mattered while I friendly corrected people, bit back if it was very crude or I was simply just fed up, and at times just ignored it if it sounded acceptable enough.
However, later as an adult it became at times frustrating in professional settings, where you had to start making a name for yourself – preferably with the one given to you by birth. Several scholars, researchers, and D&I specialists passing my LinkedIn feed point out that making a name which sounds ‘different’ than usual to something more familiar is connected to people’s desire to make the one in front of you comfortable or even acceptable by creating a familiar version of you. I lived in a bunch of countries and travelled to several places, where I made a point out of it to stress that my name did not adapt once I crossed borders: faw-ZI-ya… and that was it.
Though at times, I had a blast as a youngster adapting my name to a local version while travelling through the MENA region and ‘acting’ as one of the natives – different context, different situation, and different vibe where often them adopting a name was one of interest to find a comparison and learn more about you as a person while making you feel welcome. An honor nickname if you will.
When I started my new job at the Dutch Mission in Vienna in September 2022, I dreaded having to go through all that again. To my surprise, my amazing team members, including our conservative head of the mission, hit the stress and pronunciation right from day 1. One month in, I realized that having to speak Dutch again at work daily after 10 years in an exclusively international environment, both professionally and personally, triggered a bunch of linguistical things
A different speech pattern with different stresses, familiar sounds from a long-forgotten past full of mispronounced names, and an innate desire to connect to my countrymen to just give some colleagues who couldn’t get it right for the life of them a break… Two weeks in and I ended up mispronouncing my name the moment I saw a Dutch number on the screen of my work phone. Correcting myself afterwards must have confused my colleagues immensely. Two months later, I got the hang of it until a couple of days ago when I had to call the motherland:
The lady on the phone: WHAT is your name?
Me: Fausia. [I repeated it slower and articulated it more clearly]
The lady on the phone: Sophia?
Me: Oh, no, haha, faauuusiiiiiaaa. Let me spell it for you, f-a-u-s-i-a.
The lady on the phone: Oh, why didn’t you say that? It’s FAW-sha. You have to pronounce it like this.
Me: …!
Also me: Sure, let’s move on.
The next morning my uncle called me and asked if he, ‘Moh’, could speak to ‘Fausia’ in the special tone he keeps for strangers as he did not recognize the Dutchified name and accent I unconsciously used to answer his way too early call to wish me a happy birthday. My dear uncle rages at least once a week that he is being called ‘Moh’ by business contacts.
Linguistics, language patterns, and brains doing their own thing… The bottom line of this? I won’t get upset if you sometimes can’t pronounce my name correctly. I am apparently in dubio myself these days ?.
Side note: just do not do the Sophia thing, I will never know if you are referring to me.