Owning your Name
In year 5 of primary school, my teacher made a joke out of my surname…in front of the whole class
My surname is commonly mis-pronounced as ‘man’ - and this was the butt of the joke. Essentially, he was insinuating that even though I was female, my surname was ‘male’ (slightly problematic, right?!). The joke went further; in British slang we use the term ‘man’ a lot (check out Urban Dictionary for all your British slang definitions). He used this slang to further joke about how if I was a footballer and missed the goal, the commentator would be like ‘can’t believe Mann missed the goal man!’
Obviously this was in year 5, so all the kids found it hilarious. My teacher was one of those who tried to ‘act cool’ for the kids, so whatever he would say or do, the kids would follow. Therefore, I remember hearing that joke all the way until I left primary school to another secondary school. That was the first time someone claimed ownership of my name and made it the butt of their joke.
The next time someone claimed ownership of my name was in secondary school itself. In assembly a teacher was handing out certificates for good performance in class. I was a good kid, so of course my certificate was going to be handed out too. And in that moment, the teacher announced my name as ‘Simranpreet.’ For a minute I just sat there, all of us looking around. Did he mean me? Then someone nudged me and said ‘I think that’s you.’ Not only did the teacher pronounce my name wrong, I had to walk through and actually collect the certificate, without saying a single word of pronouncing my name completely wrong. It was as if I accepted the name and the misspelt certificate. The ironic thing is our names are written down on the register, what excuse did you have for getting it wrong?
Now you may be reading this and thinking, come on Sim, this isn’t a big deal?!
It really is when this keeps happening to you over and over. People assuming what to call you, what jokes to make about your name and who you are. It affects your confidence and the way you view yourself.
And don’t think these incidents stopped after school. I’ve had an old colleague literally say to me ‘can I call you, Sim?’ and then without waiting for my reply, just said ‘Yup I’m going to call you, Sim.’ Imagine going to someone called ‘Michael’ or ‘Catherine’ and saying, you know what, I’m just going to call you ‘Mike’ or ‘Kate.’ You wouldn’t like it being done to you, so why is it okay to do it to us.
And by ‘us’ I mean people of BAME backgrounds, the people of underrepresented communities.
Unfortunately my story isn’t unique, many people have experienced similar things to me.
How did I move on from these incidents, start accepting my identity and take back ownership of my name? Honestly, I started exploring what my name actually meant, and that’s when I fell in love with it.
So my name is very common amongst Sikh individuals.
Simranjeet can be split into two words;
Simran means continuous remembrance of God, and can also mean meditation. As Sikhs, we do ‘Simran’ as a prayer by saying ‘Waheguru’ (God) continuously.
Jeet means win.
So personally, I feel my name put together means that the remembrance of God will always help me win in life.
Kaur is the middle name denoted to every Sikh woman
It can be interpreted as ‘princess’ or ‘lionness’
Every Sikh male has the middle name ‘Singh’, so giving females ‘Kaur’ was a sign of equality
Mann means honour or pride
My surname was what hit me the most; it was a beautiful surname, and one that’s actually pronounced ‘maan’ instead of ‘man.’ It taught me that I should have honour and pride in my name, take ownership of it.
That’s why everywhere I post content publicly, my full name is there. That’s why whenever someone pronounces / spells my name wrong, I correct them. The latter is tiring and exhausting sometimes, but I refuse to let anyone claim they know my name better than me.
