London Daily

Focus on the big picture.
Thursday, Oct 09, 2025

What it reveals when senators repeatedly mispronounce the names of Kamala Harris and Sundar Pichai

What it reveals when senators repeatedly mispronounce the names of Kamala Harris and Sundar Pichai

It is a truth universally acknowledged that if you live in the US and have a non-English name, someone at some point is bound to butcher the pronunciation.

People across virtually every ethnic group have had to deal with others struggling to get their names right. And the problem seems to persist no matter how powerful or visible a person becomes.

Take Wednesday's Senate hearing with top tech executives, among them Google CEO Sundar Pichai.

Despite the fact that Pichai runs one of the world's most powerful companies and that he had testified on Capitol Hill before, senators still couldn't seem to pronounce his name correctly -- instead calling him variations of "Mr. Pick Eye" and Mr. Pish Eye." (It's pronounced "pih-chai," like the spiced beverage.)

Then there was Sen. David Perdue's handling of the Democratic vice presidential nominee's name earlier this month during a rally for President Donald Trump. The Georgia Republican referred to his colleague, Sen. Kamala Harris, as "Ka-ma-la or Ka-ma-la, Kamala-mala-mala," punctuating that with "I don't know, whatever."(Harris has served in the US Senate for almost four years and pronounces her name "COMMA-la," like the punctuation mark.)

Continually mispronouncing someone's name is lazy at best and malicious at worst, as many people have been quick to point out. And too often, the names that are regarded as "too difficult" to learn belong to people of color.

To paraphrase what actress Uzo Aduba said her mother told her growing up, "If they can learn to say Tchaikovsky and Michelangelo and Dostoyevsky," people can learn to say Sundar Pichai and Kamala Harris.

Ultimately, expert say, the issue boils down to power and respect.

Botched names are often tied to race


Encountering unfamiliar-sounding names is inevitable in a country as multicultural as the US, and stumbling a few times at first is normal.

You might recall how many Americans tripped up over the name of former South Bend, Indiana, mayor Pete Buttigieg (it's pronounced "BOOT-edge-edge"), prompting his husband to tweet several phonetic pronunciations.

Non-English names, naturally, employ stress patterns or sounds that aren't used in English, and remembering those sequences can be challenging, says Megha Sundara, a linguistics professor at the University of California, Los Angeles.

The issue, though, isn't unintentional mistakes, but rather how people recover from them.

"You can double down out of embarrassment, or apologize and fix it," Sundara wrote in an email to CNN. "Because 'say my name' is perhaps the most basic way in which we ask others to acknowledge our existence."

So when someone doesn't take the time to learn the proper way to pronounce another person's name -- or worse, intentionally mocks it for being "too hard" to pronounce -- it can come across as malicious.

It also evokes the nation's history of dominant groups forcing new names on people of oppressed groups, such as enslaved Africans and indigenous children in government schools, says Rita Kohli, an associate professor of education at the University of California, Riverside.

"There is a longstanding history of forcible assimilation in this country as a way to maintain the power structure," she wrote in an email to CNN. "To ensure that White Anglo Saxon, English, Protestantism stayed dominant, those who did not fit were made to change things such as their language, their names. It has created a culture where those who are dominant have not had to engage in reciprocal relationships of learning."

That dominant groups dismiss certain names as too hard to get right is tied to racism and other forms of oppression, Kohli added.

Perdue's derisive mocking of his fellow senator's name amounted to "disrespecting and deprofessionalizing a Black and woman of color vice presidential candidate," Kohli said. (A spokesperson for Perdue's campaign has said that he simply mispronounced the name and didn't mean anything by it.)

"One thing is for sure, if you have known somebody for a long time, and are still saying their name wrong, guess who has power in that relationship?"

Sundara added. "It's not the person who can neither correct you nor make it stick."

Some children of immigrants adapted their names to make them 'easier'


Having others constantly mess up your name can be so exhausting that some people with non-English names decide to adapt or change them.
One way is by adopting an Anglicized pronunciation.

For example, many South Asians pronounce Kamala, a common Indian name, as "come-lah" or "come-uh-lah."

"People ask me how to pronounce it. There are many ways," Harris said in a 2017 interview with David Axelrod. "If you were asking my grandmother, she'd say 'come-lah.' I usually help people pronounce it by saying, 'Well, just think of a comma and add a "-la" at the end.'"

Others, like Mindy Kaling, shorten their given names.

The actress, whose birth name is Vera Mindy Chokalingam, told NPR's Terry Gross that when was performing standup comedy early in her career, emcees had trouble pronouncing her South Indian last name -- so she shortened it, even though she had mixed feelings about the decision.

"It's bittersweet, but I have to say, it was such a help to my career to have a name that people could pronounce," she said in the interview.

And then there are some who choose to go by a different name altogether, like former Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal.

Jindal, whose parents immigrated from India and who was born with the name Piyush, began going by the name Bobby as a boy because he identified with a character in "The Brady Bunch."

But some people are pushing back


But many people of color are no longer willing to accommodate the dominant, White culture at the expense of their own heritage.

Last year, comedian Hasan Minhaj appeared on Ellen DeGeneres' show and refused to move on during a segment until the TV host pronounced his name correctly.

"When I first started doing comedy, people were like, 'You should change your name,'" he said on the show. "I'm like, 'I'm not going to change my name. If you can pronounce Ansel Elgort, you can pronounce Hasan Minhaj.'"

Harris, too, has insisted that people get her name right, tying her experiences to what so many others go through.

"That the highest elected leaders should conduct themselves like they did when they were children on the playground, it speaks poorly of their appreciation for the responsibility of the role that they have," she said on The Daily Show. "And I think it's a reflection of their values and their maturity."

Newsletter

Related Articles

0:00
0:00
Close
France: Less Than a Month After His Appointment, the New French Prime Minister Resigns
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán stated that Hungary will not adopt the euro because the European Union is falling apart.
Sarah Mullally Becomes First Woman Appointed Archbishop of Canterbury
Mayor in western Germany in intensive care after stabbing
Australian government pays Deloitte nearly half a million dollars for a report built on fabricated quotes, fake citations, and AI-generated nonsense.
US Prosecutors Gained Legal Approval to Hack Telegram Servers
Macron Faces Intensifying Pressure to Resign or Trigger New Elections Amid France’s Political Turmoil
Standard Chartered Names Roberto Hoornweg as Sole Head of Corporate & Investment Banking
UK Asylum Housing Firm Faces Backlash Over £187 Million Profits and Poor Living Conditions
UK Police Crack Major Gang in Smuggling of up to 40,000 Stolen Phones to China
BYD’s UK Sales Soar Nearly Nine-Fold, Making Britain Its Biggest Market Outside China
Trump Proposes Farm Bailout from Tariff Revenues Amid Backlash from Other Industries
FIFA Accuses Malaysia of Forging Citizenship Documents, Suspends Seven Footballers
Latvia to Bar Tourist and Occasional Buses to Russia and Belarus Until 2026
A Dollar Coin Featuring Trump’s Portrait Expected to Be Issued Next Year
Australia Orders X to Block Murder Videos, Citing Online Safety and Public Exposure
Three Scientists Awarded Nobel Prize in Medicine for Discovery of Immune Self-Tolerance Mechanism
OpenAI and AMD Forge Landmark AI-Chip Alliance with Equity Option
Munich Airport Reopens After Second Drone Shutdown
France Names New Government Amid Political Crisis
Trump Stands Firm in Shutdown Showdown and Declares War on Drug Cartels — Turning Crisis into Opportunity
Surge of U.S. Billionaires Transforms London’s Peninsula Apartments into Ultra-Luxury Stronghold
Pro Europe and Anti-War Babiš Poised to Return to Power After Czech Parliamentary Vote
Jeff Bezos Calls AI Surge a ‘Good’ Bubble, Urges Focus on Lasting Innovation
Japan’s Ruling Party Chooses Sanae Takaichi, Clearing Path to First Female Prime Minister
Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs Sentenced to Fifty Months in Prison Following Prostitution Conviction
Taylor Swift’s ‘Showgirl’ Launch Extends Billion-Dollar Empire
Trump Administration Launches “TrumpRx” Plan to Enable Direct Drug Sales at Deep Discounts
Trump Announces Intention to Impose 100 Percent Tariff on Foreign-Made Films
Altman Says GPT-5 Already Outpaces Him, Warns AI Could Automate 40% of Work
Singapore and Hong Kong Vie to Dominate Asia’s Rising Gold Trade
Trump Organization Teams with Saudi Developer on $1 Billion Trump Plaza in Jeddah
Manhattan Sees Surge in Office-to-Housing Conversions, Highest Since 2008
Switzerland and U.S. Issue Joint Assurance Against Currency Manipulation
Electronic Arts to Be Taken Private in Historic $55 Billion Buyout
Thomas Jacob Sanford Named as Suspect in Deadly Michigan Church Shooting and Arson
Russian Research Vessel 'Yantar' Tracked Mapping Europe’s Subsea Cables, Raising Security Alarms
New York Man Arrested After On-Air Confession to 2017 Parents’ Murders
U.S. Defense Chief Orders Sudden Summit of Hundreds of Generals and Admirals
Global Cruise Industry Posts Dramatic Comeback with 34.6 Million Passengers in 2024
Trump Claims FBI Planted 274 Agents at Capitol Riot, Citing Unverified Reports
India: Internet Suspended in Bareilly Amid Communal Clashes Between Muslims and Hindus
Supreme Court Extends Freeze on Nearly $5 Billion in U.S. Foreign Aid at Trump’s Request
Archaeologists Recover Statues and Temples from 2,000-Year-Old Sunken City off Alexandria
China Deploys 2,000 Workers to Spain to Build Major EV Battery Factory, Raising European Dependence
Speed Takes Over: How Drive-Through Coffee Chains Are Rewriting U.S. Coffee Culture
U.S. Demands Brussels Scrutinize Digital Rules to Prevent Bias Against American Tech
Ringo Starr Champions Enduring Beatles Legacy While Debuting Las Vegas Art Show
Private Equity’s Fundraising Surge Triggers Concern of European Market Shake-Out
Colombian President Petro Vows to Mobilize Volunteers for Gaza and Joins List of Fighters
×