Chandan and Diya.

As our parents told us about their lives before us, my brother and I sat in the back of an auto-rickshaw in India and laughed at our could-have-been names. I really cannot imagine our lives as Chandan and Diya — it feels odd to think about these two strangers, even though, technically, we’d be the exact same people. It’s Sid and Gauri, and that has always felt right. 

Though I can’t help but wonder what life could have been if I was Diya Manoj right now. Perhaps I’d be more athletic, or a much better singer than I am right now (I am not a good singer). It’s crazy how much your name affects the trajectory of your life — I think that’s why famous people have some of the coolest names ever. 

But I know that my name, Gauri, added some real conflict to my story. If I were Diya, I’d really miss constantly correcting my teachers or keeping an eye out for my drink before the Starbucks baristas absolutely butcher my name. I don’t think my parents ever predicted that G-A-U-R-I would be the most challenging sequence of letters for people in America. 

For a long time, I never even bothered to correct people when they said my name wrong. I like to pronounce my name as gory, like a Quentin Tarantino movie, though instead of correcting people, I memorized every (often bizarre) rendition I encountered and just grew accustomed to the various things people would call me. I let people develop the strangest nicknames for me when these five letters were just “too difficult” for them to pronounce. 

I never thought it was anyone’s fault for mispronouncing or trying to change my name, because I knew it wasn’t that intuitive. I blamed myself more for letting people continue to mispronounce my name — it made me feel disassociated from myself whenever they called me a name that was not mine, like they were speaking to a stranger. 

But as I grew older and my name became more important for credit cards, SATs or my driver’s license, I realized that I deserved to be recognized by the real name that my parents chose for me, and that was only going to happen if I taught others how to say it. Now, I’ll always tell the Starbucks baristas, “Gauri, G-A-U-R-I,”  with both the spelling and my pronunciation, even if that takes them a few tries to get right. We can always sacrifice a few seconds to respect and appreciate each others’ stories, and we can expect others to do the same for us.