3. Part 1: What’s in a name?

Resources:

Work Sucks, Especially When People Get Your Pronouns Wrong -Vice, Mary Retta 

What Does It Mean to Misgender Someone? - Healthline, Kc Clements

Changed Names, Changed Identities- The Globe and Mail, Eric Andrew-Gee

American Immigrants and the Dilemma of ‘White-Sounding’ Names -The Atlantic, Joe Pinsker

Transcript:

[Intro music starts]

Lapis: It means that it’s constantly lurking in the back of your mind. You can never step away from it. It’s always there, that reality is always taunting you. 

Phuong: Like there was this other person that existed in the eyes of people, especially in the eyes of government officials.

Lapis: And it makes me feel like I’m this Kafkaesque bug monster that everyone else sees so differently than I do.

[Intro continues and then finishes]

Lapis:Welcome to another episode of the Rising Roses. Today we will be talking about the importance of names.

Phuong:We’ll be focusing on the stories surrounding our own names, and next week in part two of our discussion, we’ll be telling stories from the greater community. So how about we start with you Lapis? What are the significant stories surrounding your name? How were you affected and what would you wish was different if any?

Lapis:Since I am a trans woman, my most significant personal experiences with naming would be when I picked a new name and had to deal with backlash/ lack of understanding from people who were used to my deadname. When I initially came out, I did it in a way that I thought was pretty crystal clear to everyone, but everyone else did not get at all. And so as a result during the last sort of month of school, because I had come out almost at the very end, I had a bunch of people still using the wrong name. And I had kind of a fear of correcting them at that point because I thought it would be like rude or demanding and I was kinda unsure of myself and not really confident enough to be like “yes, that’s wrong. This is actually how I want to be called please.” It was very difficult for me, you know?

This sort of behaviour, you know, it continued even to my family and even to this day my family still seems to struggle a lot with using my proper name. And the effect of this on me is that it kind of makes me doubt my own reality. It makes me feel like I’m delusional for thinking that I’m trans and that actually no there’s this other person who’s been existing the whole time and that only in my mind am I actually a woman. In reality, everybody else sees it a different way. 

It makes me feel like I’m this Kafkaesque bug monster who everyone else sees so differently than I do. And it is a dreadful crushing feeling. It’s dreadful for self-esteem. It’s dreadful for just wanting to interact with the world in your own way and it really makes you almost unsure of the rest of all the rest of your reality as well. It makes you just kinda doubt yourself in so many ways big or small. There will be so many times where I hear things and see things where I’m like “Am I actually seeing this? Am I actually hearing this?” I don’t know if my reality is actually happening because no one else seems to think it is. 

Phuong:Yeah, that’s really hard.

Lapis:So what I would like change is that I would like to first of all recognize that while it might be uncomfortable to ask people to use the correct name and use the correct pronouns, I still have to take that stand because if I don’t then it will just continue with that same effect. I guess what I’d like to change also just kinda normalize to myself not having a tolerance for it. If people are continually ignoring what you would want to be called then don’t be around them. Make it clear to them that the price of having me in my life is that you’re going to respect my reality and respect who I am and not just going to decide “Hey! I know this person better than they know themselves. I can decide what they think. I can decide what they feel.”

[Break music plays]

Phuong:I would like to inquire because I asked you this like months ago, would you like me to correct people when they deadname you and misgender you? At that time, because you had come out so late at the end of the school year, I felt also very uncomfortable and uncertain in whether you wanted to be out to everybody. I was unsure of what you wanted at the time.

Lapis: Yeah.

Phuong:I didn’t want to disrespect you and just out you to people you barely knew. So like it was a very difficult time. And I don’t want to centre myself and my like doubt, because obviously what you have to go through is something I could never imagine as someone who is cis. But I definitely struggled with just like doing the right thing in terms of like correcting people or in terms of respecting that you might not just want to be out to everybody at that time. So at moments when you were misgendered or moments where you were deadnamed, I like really just did not know what to do. 

And what I ended up defaulting to was just using your name, like your chosen name… your real name in a sentence right after. Like I wouldn’t like address the fact that they misgendered or deadnamed you, I would just be like “Anyway, so she said this and she said that.” And I would be like “Oh yeah, the other day I was with Lapis.” I would purposely try and use it in normal sentences as much as possible to try and give people a chance who just might not have known that you’ve transitioned a chance not to feel “called out” and like “canceled” because they didn’t know. I guess I'll take this opportunity on air to ask you now, how would you like me to respond if people from, you know, our high school or people who had known you previous to your transition deadname or misgender you? How would you like me to go about addressing that situation?

Lapis: First of all I do really appreciate you sticking up for me even when I’m not there because that’s what integrity looks like. That’s what friendship looks like: standing up for people when it’s not necessarily easy or clear. [Phuong sighs dramatically like a Southern Belle] So first of all, thank you for the efforts that you have made.

One of the unfortunate things of when you have just come out and are really unsure about yourself is that you’re also really unsure about what you want. You’re really unsure about how much do I want people to stand up for you in this regard? How much do I want to correct people? How much do I not want to correct people? Is it safe being seen like this by certain people? Is it not? 

And I think I have finally decided that Lapis is how I want to be seen by everybody.

Phuong: Okay, absolutely!

Lapis:Please do correct people if they deadname me and misgender me or whatnot, because Lapis is who I am. [Phuong:Yep] Lapis is who I am.

Phuong: Yeah, absolutely! Yeah, that’s what I remember you telling me when I asked you this but I wanted to make sure and have it on recording as well. Just also for myself because even though I try as best I can to stand up for you, there are definitely moments when I’m not the best[Phuong sighs] ally if you will because I myself don’t know how to navigate the social situation. [Lapis:Yeah] So I know that I have to do better as well. I appreciate your thanks but I have to hold myself accountable and by having this on air and having you say it to me I think is also going to help me hold myself accountable for the future because now I can cement 100% that this is what you want me to do.

Lapis:Yeah because I feel like I gave you kind of mixed messaging when we talked about it the two other times. And although I did say Lapis is who I am, I didn’t necessarily say “Please tell people that Lapis is who I am, refer to me by it. No one in my life is going to be exempt from seeing me this way.”

Phuong:Absolutely! Okay, that makes a lot of sense. I think that it’s good to have this conversation because I remember when my friend came out to me it was also hard for me to know the cases in where to correct people. Because at the time where they came out to me, um, they were very scared and didn’t want people to know they were trans. So they were still being deadnamed constantly, they were still being misgendered constantly. I was often the only person in the room who would know that they were trans right, but obviously because they expressly asked me not to correct people, I didn’t right. But I think that’s also something we should normalize is just asking the person what they would like.

Lapis:Yeah and don’t assume that you know their needs better than they know them themselves because every trans person has different needs. [Phuong:Absolutely] Some trans people will be like “okay, correct these people but not these other people” because, you know, they might be in very different situations. [Phuong:Right.] They might have to deal with very unaccepting people in their lives or, this is the worst case scenario, at risk if their family knows their actual identity.

Phuong:Yeah absolutely. A lot of times, especially for trans folks, it’s a matter of safety, right? Not just trans people, most folks in the LGBT community, but especially trans folks it’s a question of safety many times. So of course we have to keep that in mind whenever we discuss how much do we correct people/ourselves in a certain context?

Lapis:And I think this is what separates, you know, a self-centred ally from a good one is realizing that, you know, marginalized people are not a monolith and will have different needs. And to normalize asking marginalized people themselves what their needs are instead of deciding you know them better than they do.

Phuong: Absolutely! I completely agree. I also think that we should normalize context and realize that of course certain marginalized folks have different preferences but also recognize that there’s still a widely regarded norm in terms of what is acceptable or isn’t acceptable to use in terms of reference to a group of people for example, right? A lot of times I would see, for example, like at least from what I’ve seen when referring to trans people as a whole, using trans as like an adjective and being like “This is a trans woman, right? This is a trans man.” Not using it as a verb such as “transgendered” because it’s like it kind of implies-

Lapis:[loud cough] It’s also like grammatically awkward.

Phuong:It is. It just sounds weird, first of all.[laugh] And second of all it just makes it feel like, again like, separating their womanhood, or manhood, or personhood if they are non binary, from their overall dignity. And makes it feel like something you can put on or off because that’s the assumption behind a verb. Like once you stop doing the verb, you’re not doing that action any further.

Lapis:It’s not something you are, it’s something that you’ve “Oh you know , it’s the clothes I’m trying on. I’ll take it off eventually.” [Phuong: Right, exactly] Which has a lot of unfortunate implications [Phuong:Absolutely] that people have about trans people in general, that they are trenders[Phuong:Right] who just go “I want to be seen as a woman for like five weeks, then I’ll go back to my usual self!”

Phuong:Right and even though I’m sure there might be some trans folk who don’t really care if you say they’re transgendered or who just don’t really feel impacted by it personally, but there has been enough trans folks in general who have come out and said “this is what we would like to be referred to as.” So it doesn’t make any sense for somebody to say “well I have one singular friend who said it was okay to use transgendered.” Although we should normalize asking people in the context, like realising that marginalized folks are never a monolith, it’s not an excuse for you to use terms that are widely considered disrespectful by a large aggregate of people within that community, right?

Lapis:[sarcastically] Oh well I have an Indigenous friend, and they said it’s okay to call them “Indian.”

Phuong:Right. And it’s like in that case, you can refer to them as that when you talk to them. [Lapis:umm-hmm] From friend to friend? Fine, right? But when you’re talking about Indigenous issues, or when you’re talking about for example like Indigenous land claims, right? If you’re talking about a broader aggregate, it makes more sense to use the preferred term by the broader aggregate. [Lapis:umm-hmm] Like it doesn’t make sense to me to use the term that one person kind of “gave you permission to do.”

Lapis:It’s also very tokenizing.

Phuong:Yeah absolutely. And it’s actually I guess feeding back into the idea that all, well, marginalized groups are a monolith. Because my one friend said that this was true which must mean they are a representative of the entire group which they belong to, which again is just false. 

(Break music plays)

Phuong:I will talk briefly about my, ah, significant personal experience with the politics of naming. So what happened [Phuong laughs that sighs exhausted with the nonsense of this world] what happened was that when I became a permanent resident of this fake country that is Canada, [Lapis sniggers] the government officials who put in my permanent residency file decided of their own accord that the name Phuong was just unnecessary. That she was simply too long and they did not have time to type in the additional six letters into the field that said “Given Names.” 

So, they looked at all my other Vietnamese names. So my full name in Vietnamese is Nguyen Vu Thao Phuong, so in Vietnamese you say the last name to the first name, right? So the Nguyen Vu Thao, or like in English the Vu Thao Nguyen part of my name, it stayed and they assumed that my mother’s last name Vu and my middle name Thao were my two real names. Nguyen as my last name stayed and Phuong was just some nice little dalliance for decoration. So then when I became a permanent resident of Canada, my legal name no longer was Phuong even though on my Vietnamese passport I used to enter Canada, it said Phuong. Even though on my birth certificate, it says Phuong you know? And all of my legal documents prior to my permanent residency in Canada said Phuong. But it was that moment in June of 2008 where that one little mistake was made that my whole life was changed because my legal name no longer was Phuong and it became Vu Thao, which is my two middle names.[Lapis:mmm-hmmm]

So how did this affect me? Well basically, on the practical level it affected all my legal documents so any time I went somewhere to travel, any time I used my passport or my driver’s license or my health card I would have to remember that the people who received my information would only know me as Vu or Vu Thao. And they would never know me as Phuong unless I explicitly asked them to refer to me as Phuong for my preferred name. Of course it’s nowhere near the same as how you would feel Lapis but it also made me feel like as if there was this other person that existed in the eyes of people, especially in the eyes of government officials. And it didn’t correspond to who I actually was, who my friends knew me as, who my family knew me as and just who I really was, truly and honestly. And it was very frustrating to have to explain that, you know, this was the situation right? I also often times felt very tired because when friends would see my legal documents or whenever it was time to get my report card in school people would always be very confused and be like “But wait, this isn’t your legal name? What’s going on?” And I would have to explain the whole story over again about how my name was basically taken from me like without my consent.

Lapis:Mmm-hmmm. So one thing I think is really interesting about this- two things actually but first- constantly having to constantly retread out and explain for people all the time in your life and go through that, you know, process of “Oh yeah. My name was literally taken from me by the state. Oh yeah, that wasn’t. This critical part of my identity isn’t in my hands.” Having to say that over and over and over again, it means that it’s constantly lurking in the back of your mind. You can never step away from it. It is always there, that reality is always taunting you.

Phuong:Absolutely. And it’s hard because it’s present every time I do anything official right? Anytime I buy a plane ticket, anytime I open my transcript for university, anytime I sign a lease, every single time I do anything legally binding, I have to use my incomplete name. Because that’s another thing, right? Vu and Thao are part of my names, and I love that part of my name. But it’s not complete, you know. It’s not my full name. It’s not my full identity. So it always feels like I am acting as, like,  a half-person if you will? As if all these documents were incomplete of who I really was.

And am I actually in the process of changing my name legally now. My name change was actually denied the first time I sent it in because I was under the assumption that they would be able to see and understand that the reason why my legal documents didn’t match was because of a mistake. And they would grant me a name change because they would see that on my birth certificate and my Vietnamese passport it said my true name. That they would be like “Oh, of course we’ll change it for you,” but of course that’s not how bureaucracy works. And they sent back my application saying “Well, you filled it out wrong because these documents don’t match.” And basically they said “Please fill it out with the correct name of what your legal name actually is.” And now I have to go through the whole process of sending in this application again but on top of that I have to send an explanation letter and additional documents proving that it wasn’t under my consent that my name was legally changed. Umm, and that’s, like, been a pretty exhausting process as well. [Lapis:Mmm-hmm]

But this is what I would like to do about it right? I would simply like to change my name and have my legal name reflect who I am and actually be able to see my name printed properly on credit cards, printed properly on my transcripts. It feels like such a small thing that most people already have but it would make such a difference to me. And I feel like you would probably feel the same, to have all your legal documents reflect who you are too. [Lapis:*laughs, oh yeah] I think that that’s perhaps something we’d both like, not just have our names known by the people in our lives but to have our names reflected in the official documents that we are forced to use.

Lapis:Yeah, legally recognized and not constantly have our reality constantly questioned by the “higher authorities.” [Phuong;Yeah absolutely] Umm, and the second thing that I didn’t get a chance to say is this is something that white supremacy loves to do. It loves to take the names and naming traditions of people from different cultures and ethnicities and then “Ooop no!” reformulate them into Western models of first name, last name and middle name.

Phuong:You know what’s ridiculous though? People in Western cultures still have long names. [Lapis:It’s true, yeah] I have a friend who literally has four names as well. She has a first name, she has two middle names because she has one middle name and she also took her mum’s last name as a middle name, similar to me, and then she has her dad’s last name. And yet somehow that’s all printed properly. That’s all accounted for in all her legal documents. So it doesn’t make any sense to me that people can comprehend that like Western names can be long and can have more than one middle name, but yet when it comes to ethnic names, when it comes to like Hispanic people who have many middle names, when it comes to long names from Greek or from Arab people it suddenly becomes inconvenient to fully fill out all of their given names. That makes no sense to me.

[Break Music Plays]

Lapis:Well I can venture a guess. The reason it works like that is because we go back to the constant theme of the immigrant is the Other. They are a different person, but the people who are the majority in the country they get to be individuals. Their identity is visible, while the immigrant has their identity as “Oh we have to like help this person reintegrate into our society. We have to mold them into the image of the majority.” Meanwhile, if someone in the majority has two middle names, oh well that’s fine. It’s no big deal because they get to be as an individual. Their name is not political, their name is individual preference. But for somebody in an outgroup, their name is challenging. It threatens umm, I guess, the idea that there should be a homogenous Canadian culture. [Phuong: Absolutely] So it has to be changed. 

Phuong: I think that’s a really good explanation, and I would venture to agree with you that that is most likely the case. That constantly immigrants, especially racialized immigrants, are othered in that way and are constantly seen as foreigner, right? No matter what they do, no matter how much they have culturally assimilated, or how well they speak English or French, due to the way that we racialize folks and we stratify our society based on race, there will always be an experience of otherness in spaces where they are very visibly a minority. [Lapis:Mmm-hmm]

[Ending theme plays]

Lapis:That’s a wrap for the first part of our conversation on the power of names and naming things. If you have a story you’d like to share about your name or the name of someone you know, reach out to us. We’d love to hear from you.

Phuong: As usual, you’ll find our socials, contact info and show notes on our website therisingroses.ca. You can send us a recording of our story if you want, or write to us if you’re more comfortable with that. 

Lapis: See you next week for part 2 of our discussion on names and naming in the wider community.

Phuong: Be sure to check out our website www.therisingroses.ca for show notes and other resources. 

Lapis:This episode was…

Phuong:...edited and produced by Vu Hai Nguyen. The theme music was composed by Oscar Abley.

Lapis:All other sounds are from zappslapp.com. Cover art was designed by Bridget Lee. 

Phuong:Until next time!

[Ending theme music ends. Record bleeps]

Lapis:On the three, the two, the three two one. [Phuong laughs] You didn’t go!

Phuong:Because I didn’t want to do it in unison!