Getting Over Herself Was Never Really An Option
The last person I had to correct for the misspelling of my name was someone from my own employer, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
So writes journalist – and, it seems, attention-seeker – Tahlea Aualiitia:
I was invited to join a panel on representation in pop culture by the ABC News Channel earlier this month, and because the name super (the strap with my name at the bottom of the screen) was added during production, I wasn’t aware my name was spelled incorrectly until after the interview had finished and I was informed by my family and friends.
Faintly ironic, perhaps, at least if you squint. But as claims of victimhood go, and as a basis for an article on how terribly oppressed one is, it needs a little work.
Typos happen and I understand how a slip of the finger on the keyboard turned my surname from Aualiitia into Auakiitia.
Ah, forgiveness. How refreshing. An apology was forthcoming, too, so I’m sure we’re all ready to move on.
But while it was the first time I had done a TV interview, it wasn’t the first time I had seen my name spelled wrong in the media.
Scratch that. Incoming.
Just a month ago, my name was spelled incorrectly by a producer in my own department, the Asia Pacific Newsroom.
Yes, another misspelling of a phonetically unobvious Samoan name. That’s two whole times. A scarring experience, it would seem, one that “can have big impacts among communities that often don’t see themselves reflected in the media.” “I knew I had to call them out,” says Ms Aualiitia, rather proudly.
The next morning, I sent an email to my manager asking to write this piece.
Selflessly, of course, for the greater good.
It’s no coincidence I’m speaking up about this during the latest wave of the Black Lives Matter movement. It’s hard to explain what racism feels like to someone who has never experienced it.
Oh, come on. You knew it was time for some bizarre dramatic ratcheting.
For me, it feels like walking around with a big target hanging around my neck.
Someone misspelled her name, you see.
You don’t know where the next attack — verbal, physical or systemic — might come from, and lived experience means you know it has to do with the colour of your skin.
Systemic name misspelling. It’s a thing now. A racist attack.
And when you’re on a public platform like national TV or social media, it feels like that target triples in size.
A sense of proportion is not, I fear, Ms Aualiitia’s strong suit.
We’re then informed, pointedly, that some people can be obnoxious on Twitter and that ABC’s Asia Pacific Newsroom, Ms Aualiitia’s current employer, doesn’t at the time of writing have specific “measures” in place to “support POC talent after a media interview.” To punish obnoxious tweets, one assumes. We’re also told that “research from Deakin University in 2019 found that more than a third of Australian media articles reflected negative views of minority communities.” However, we’re not told the particulars of those articles, the actual subject matter, or whether a negative view might therefore be justified or difficult to avoid.
As grounds for a drama of racial victimhood, it all seems a little unsteady, not entirely load-bearing. But apparently, we’re to believe that two occasions of an incorrectly spelled name constitute racial oppression – systemic racial oppression – and a basis for public weeping and some kind of corrective activity. Such is the fearlessness of our heroine in her ongoing fight against racial bigotry.
There are countless times where the POC talent I’ve met have audibly exhaled in relief when they saw that me, a brown woman, was the one interviewing them.
I’ll just leave that there, I think.
Oh, and if the umbrage above sounds a little familiar, yes, we’ve been here before.
Via Rafi.
Heavens, a button. I wonder what it does.
I assumed her name was Karen.
I have an anglophone surname and have also had my name misspelt by the ABC.
Given the fuss, and the claims being made, I suppose you have to wonder whether Ms Aualiitia is every bit as punctilious in her spelling of strangers’ names. Lest she do them permanent emotional harm.
I have a name that gets mangled in computer interfaces because of typeface font issues.
When getting hired or starting some large enough project with people, at some point, I tend to point out that, by the way, I have a name that gets mangled in computer interfaces because of typeface font issues.
And we make certain that the potential typos are checked for, and that’s the end of that.
—And particularly when working with people face to face, the issue never comes up, ’cause it ain’t a personal issue, it’s a particular typeface font issue.
If she hates Western culture, she can go back to her island cave, where everyone knows how to spell her name with fish bones, or is it coconut shells? Oh, that’s right…they don’t have a written language!
Looks to me like her parents started the whole name-calling thing. She should go after them.
My surname is five letters long. It’s a simple name, unlike Aualiitia, and yet you’d be surprised how many people seem to have trouble with both the pronunciation and the spelling. Change the second letter and several not particularly flattering words can be made from it. But the mis-spelling that takes the prize was on a letter from a company which added four extra letters and put umlauts on the vowels. At the time I got over myself and laughed it off. If only I’d known how terribly oppressed I was. I could have been in line for some compensation.
Fake victimhood shouldn’t be a career option.
I honestly don’t know how I survived the occasional mistakes made by others regarding my surname (another five-letter job; we fivers must be particularly open to such intolerable discrimination here)! I guess I’m just naturally strong and brave like that… It certainly never occurred to me that I could gain financial or other compensation via these incidents, so I must be socially thick as well!!!
Samoan you say. There used to be a punk band back in the day called The Angry Samoans. Perhaps they are a bolshy lot?
My surname is five letters long. It’s a simple name, unlike Aualiitia, and yet you’d be surprised how many people seem to have trouble with both the pronunciation and the spelling.
I try to be accurate when spelling and pronouncing unfamiliar names, on principle and as a courtesy, even an ironic one, but Ms Aualiitia does seem to be clawing at the barrel’s bottom. And then some. And when faced with the supposedly life-denting outrage of a misspelled surname – in my case, with no ‘p’ or a missing ‘h’ – I’ve managed to avoid filling my pockets with rocks and throwing myself in the nearest river. Nor would it occur to me to construct some elaborate patchwork article as to why this occasional humdrum error makes me put-upon and entitled to both sympathy and national attention.
I’m funny that way.
Come to America, sweetie, and see how many people can’t pronounce Hugh.
Dear Miss Aquavita
On behalf of all people of privilege everywhere I’d like to apologise for our insensitivity regarding the accurate spelling or pronunciation of your name.
Due to my inherited whiteness I have never had to suffer such indignities and can only imagine the constant trauma.
Sincerely
Theophilus Farquhar-Featherstonhaugh
My name is frequently misspelled, as Marc rather than Mark, even by people replying to an email I sent them. Presumably my lack of fucks given is a reflection of my white privilege.
On that topic, the South China Morning Post ran a long article by Chandran Nair, who is a sort of alternative economist, in which he rails against the evils of white privilege. No comments allowed, natch.
https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/3090803/white-privilege-dismantle-it-we-must-first-learn-identify-it
It’s full of gems, but one that stands out is: The hijab is perceived as oppressive, while a bikini is viewed as freedom. Apparently the Western sexualised view of wimmin, which may lead to the exposure of limbs on a beach, is more oppressive than making women wear bags on their heads and enforcing this with violence.
There is also a long list of things, from investment banks and large accountancy firms to literature, which are unfair because the best-known examples are Western. Yes folks, your racism prevents Indian accountancy firms from being globally recognised.
He also whines that The belief that solutions to climate change and other global environmental challenges can only come from the research centres, leaders, activists and spokespersons from the West is widespread. An odd contention, considering that, if you believe the worst about climate change (and having seen Nair speak, he does) you’d have thought he’d be more concerned about the lack of leadership on this topic from India and China.
His most significant failure, however, is his failure to account for the global success of non-white nations such as Japan, South Korea and Taiwan, all of which have developed advanced, prosperous and democratic systems, despite all that white privilege. Japanese and South Korean tech and engineering firms have global reach and both nations are also increasingly culturally significant (eg Korean film getting best picture).
Dear Miss Aquavita…
Ha ha ha ha ha…
My real surname has two common spellings, one vastly more so than the other. Mine is the latter. Until someone famous emerged recently with my spelling, nobody ever got it right. Even then, he’s only famous in certain circles, and people are beginning to forget. I get letters from my bank with the wrong spelling, and they’ve had my name in writing for nearly 50 years.
My heart bleeds, Tallya.
’… that ABC’s Asia Pacific Newsroom, Ms Aualiitia’s current employer, doesn’t at the time of writing have specific “measures” in place to “support POC talent after a media interview.”’
Maybe they don’t consider you all that talented..?
Oh FFS.
spelled wrong
She’s a journalist, you say?
Relevant, and personal.
Also, when I was in high school, I had a Chinese-American classmate named Lau and a different classmate named Lowe. Both surnames were pronounced the same way, but as somebody pointed out, everybody got Ms. Lau’s name right but not Mr. Lowe.
Someone misspelled my name. I no longer “feel safe.” Mommy!!!
It’s amazing how modern leftists are willing, even eager, to publicly humiliate themselves by acting like hurt, helpless children in order to push the leftist agenda forward. You see it all the time now.
It’s beyond ridicule, though, because this is now an accepted tactic of the left. They know what they’re doing.
Be a crybaby. Pretend to be shaken to the core by inconsequential matters. Act as infantile as you can and institutions will cave in to you. It’s a winning strategy.
His most significant failure, however, is his failure to account for the global success of non-white nations such as . . . Taiwan . . .
Oh, that one’s easy.
According to the mainland Chinese—or a section of Beijing, at least—there is no Taiwan, there is merely another of those indisputably anonymous islands just a few feet off the Chinese coast.
What a rant for nothing. I’m a classic WASP and my name has been spelled wrong of decades. My last name, Matthew, usually gets an ‘s’ or a dropped ‘t’ – sometimes both. I used to tell people to spell like in the Bible, but these days I get more strange looks so I usually just let it go.
My first name is Maureen – I realize it is a classic Irish name (I was named after Maureen O’Hara because I was born with red hair, my mother was born in Ireland, but my father loved Maureen O’Hara) but young people are totally baffled by it. Once I spell it for them they still look at me strangely. 28 years ago I bought my house and had to set up various utility accounts. On my water and sewer bill from the City it is spelled Morine, on my electric bill it is spelled Marine and on my phone bill it is spelled Marina. In the early years I tried to get them to change it, but they seemed baffled (because as one young employee told me they don’t get things like this wrong), or they needed reams of documentation to change it ‘for security reasons – we can’t let anyone change their bill!).
Can I have a rant on these obviously biased institutions who are discriminating against the lowly and abused Irish? Where to I go to get my repatriations?
Without giving too much away, my last name is rather common. On occasion there have been other people in my school or class or large company with the same last name. It’s even a word you can find in the dictionary and appeared a couple of times in grade school readers which like it or not gave me some limited attention. Hardly ever seen anyone with phonetically similar name spell differently except a very few times with Dutch or South African (Dutch). Any moderately educated English speaking person would wince at spelling it that way. Never had a problem with anyone misspelling it…except once. When trying to make a hotel reservation in West Virginia, a place I may note where the name is more common than most other places. I had to spell it out for the girl taking the reservation about six times. It was like a Monty Python skit. I would swear she was doing it on purpose though for what purpose I couldn’t say.
It’s as if she is announcing to the world, “don’t hire me, I’m trouble”.
And somehow, all of us wypipo are “fragile.”
What they call fragile, normal people call competent.
Accomplishment does wonders for your resilience.
My name is frequently misspelled, as Marc rather than Mark, even by people replying to an email I sent them. Presumably my lack of fucks given is a reflection of my white privilege
My surname is “de Haan”, which is invariably spelled as “Dehann”, even when people have it spelled out for them letter by letter. I tell them “DEE EE SPACE CAPITAL AYTCH AY AY EN”. I tell them “DELTA ECHO SPACE CAPITAL HOTEL ALFA ALFA NOVEMBER”.
It doesn’t matter. No matter what I say, “aan” invariably becomes “ann”. I’ve even had people look at the “ann” they’ve written down, have them read it back to me, and they read it back “alfa alfa november, like you said”.
It’s simply something English speakers do. The spelling is uncommon, so they mentally map it to a more common ‘correct’ spelling. They don’t realize they’re doing it.
On my university diploma, my name is listed twice. And it’s spelled two different ways. I’ve had people look at it for two minutes before realizing that the spellings are different.
When someone does get it right, they usually have a Germanic surname.
It’s mildly annoying, especially when trying to deal with computer systems that won’t allow me to enter my proper name because the entry operator misspelled it.
And don’t get me started on what having a space in your last name does to computerized sorting algorithms. After spending five minutes fruitlessly looking for me in the their database, they will finally humour me and look under H rather than D, and hey, there you are, how did you do that?
But you can tell I’m white, because I don’t see racist oppression in this. If only I wasn’t Caucasian, I could enjoy the seemingly never ending micro aggressions directed at me every day.
It’s as if she is announcing to the world, “don’t hire me, I’m trouble”.
It’s a teachable moment–only not the one she thinks it is.
Ah, forgiveness. How refreshing.
It would be.
“I knew I had to call them out,” says Ms Aualiitia, rather proudly.
Bad hiring choice, right there.
MC: My name is frequently misspelled, as Marc rather than Mark, even by people replying to an email I sent them. Presumably my lack of fucks given is a reflection of my white privilege.
Funny: I’m the reverse. And with an uncommon, 5-letter surname, I’ve had the misspellings happen at both ends from the time I entered the school system prior to my fifth birthday. And despite the name being the content of my main email address, and obvious by signature, it’s still happening fifty years later. Even when people copy it directly from my driver’s licence. If you don’t eventually get inured to that happening constantly to something that’s literally the core of your external identity, that’s on you.
People in general can’t spell well, unless they put in effort to learn. The ubiquity of spell-checkers had rendered that unnecessary, and it shows.
Bad hiring choice, right there.
Judging by what I’ve seen of her work, Ms Aualiitia, doesn’t seem especially gifted or distinctive, at least not in her chosen field. Presumably, she believes that she can compensate for any shortcomings of insight and grammar by being needlessly captious and pretentiously agonised.
Thing is, there will always be self-flattering mediocrities who try to make race their schtick – their go-to leverage – and then use it to chide and browbeat others, often fatuously or out of recreational spite. The problem we have at the moment is that such people aren’t laughed out of the room when they try it on. Instead, the odds are good, very good, that their vanities and obnoxiousness will be indulged and rewarded, thereby encouraging more of the same, only louder and bolder.
As above, for instance.
The whole thing gets extra lols because the ABC must be the most Woke organisation in Australia.
My surname normally gets an unwanted “e” inserted. My nickname at work became Ned, for “no e damnit”.
Spelling of my last name, most people have no problem with, but it does happen somewhat regularly. Pronunciation, that is a whole different matter. I’ve had is spoken incorrectly so often that I only notice when people say it correctly now. Hell, I even received my nick-name because a supervisor could not pronounce my name. Have had my nickname for almost 35 years now. One day I will have to go to Scotland, where my surname originates, just to see if I’ve been saying it correctly. Here in western Canada, I have only met two others with the same last name.
Years ago, I contributed to a book on universities, edited by the [failing] New York Times education editor.
I received a copy for my troubles, and I, a sprat of a college journalist, eagerly turned to the acknowledgments for an ego-boost.
They misspelled my last name.
No big surprise there; it’s a German name that regularly gets the treatment. Usually, they double the L at the end, which is a weird flex, but okay.
They didn’t do that. They completely butchered it. Got the first letter, but after that a kitten must have trotted across the keyboard to get them rest.
But get this: They misspelled the first name, too.
Willem, not William.
I never had my first name — a fairly common one at that — given that treatment, and in a book published by a major publisher, and (presumably) edited by a major New York Times writer.
Now, of course, I should have taken that as a sign and changed my first name, but that bastard Willem DaFoe got to it first.
This, to warm the cockles of the most stone cold hearted….
https://twitter.com/kwilli1046/status/1252385084042145792?s=20
“support POC talent after a media interview.”’
Support for POC AFTER a media interview? What, a cup of tea and a soothing “there, there, you were wonderful, darling”? Which, of course, is what all the Pale People are treated to
I’ve had my name misspelled by my paid-out-of-pocket psychotherapist, and I got over it by the time I finished reading what he wrote.
My first name is Maureen – I realize it is a classic Irish name
A sworn to be actual occurrence was when Barbara Paxl;aasdajdkhfvcpoqafncriofn[pwski called in to the Sons Of Poland, or so, to order tickets for their upcoming event.
After a bit of a pause the fellow on the other end finally asked her how that name was spelled.
Pee Ay Exe El—
Oh, no, no, of course I can spell Paxl;aasdajdkhfvcpoqafncriofn[pwski, how do you spell that other name?
As I’m sure she’s also an ardent feminist, she should see positive aspects in the mispelling of her surname as part of the subbersive struggle against the patriarchy. This is no doubt a cause for celebration.
Uncommon Hebrew forename which sounds very like a much more common Hebrew forename; very rare Celtic surname with at least a half-dozen legitimate variations.
I’d be better off going Samoan.
All my life, whenever someone has had to call out my last name, I’ve experienced “the pause.” When new teachers would take roll call, I could predict when my name was next, even if I didn’t know the other kids’ names in alphabetical order. They’d get to my name, and … pause. You could see the mental wheels turning. “How am I supposed to pronounce this?” And naturally it gets misspelled and mispronounced all the time.
People always ask me the name’s origin (My version of “Where are you from?” “You’re so exotic!”)
Did I ever feel that I was the victim of systemic oppression? Nope.
The current moment of insane genuflecting to every supposed victim of every perceived slight and the groveling apologies by people who have done no wrong fills me with anger. Especially the apologies on behalf of my race and my people.
My name is frequently misspelled, as Marc rather than Mark, even by people replying to an email I sent them. Presumably my lack of fucks given is a reflection of my white privilege.
Ditto. I have friends who still write “Darlene” and I’ve received email replies “Dear Ms. Glick”
Both I chalk up to the fact that “Darlene” & “Glick” are more common spellings than “Darleen Click”. My spleen would have been completely destroyed years ago if I vented it each time someone misspelled or mispronounced my names. Geez.
…if I vented it each time someone misspelled or mispronounced my names. Geez.
Ms Aualiitia’s attitude doesn’t strike me as a healthy one or likely to result in a happy life, unless happiness is to be found in self-preoccupation, petty malice, and games of domination. More to the point, it’s tiresome for, and insulting to, anyone drawn into her ego’s orbit.
BTW – we named #4 daughter “Siobhan”. Pronounced “sha-VAWN”.
#3 was with some new acquaintances and they were sharing about their families when she named her sisters. One of them noted #4’s name “Oh, you have a black sister?”
when they saw that me, a brown woman, was the one interviewing them.
Grammar is hard.
When I want to fuck with the precious types (much more frequent now than previously) I tell them I’m from Gilly gilly Osenpfeffer-Katzenellenbogen by-the-sea. Some of the older ones get, the newly minted sort of glaze over.
“Oh, you have a black sister?”
That would be Chevonne. I went to high school with one.
Ah, another Thompson fisking.
I need a cigarette.