Don’t listen to Shakespeare -Respect every name

“It’s La-Me-See-ah”

If I’m really fortunate when I start a meeting with someone I’ve never met or worked with before, I get to do an intro or at the very least, give them the phonetic and correct pronunciation of my name. I appreciate those who ask first before attempting to try it, but I also do not shun the brave souls who butcher it in an attempt to show they tried. After all, I’ve had many a person shut down when just looking at my name on paper. This includes school teachers, professors, colleagues, trained medical professions. It’s resulted in my expecting to hear “Butler” instead of my first name in any new setting and also, led to a myriad of nicknames - some endearing, some not, that I’ve accepted over the years. After the last two weeks where I’ve sat in an instructional setting and had my name repeatedly mispronounced despite repeating it and having the phonetics displayed in my screen name, I’ve decided to post about the one topic that everyone had to know was coming: The bias people encounter based on their names. You know the kind, I'm talking about - the ones that don't pass the pre-printed souvenir test.

About a decade ago (maybe more), people started talking about your “personal brand” and "re-branding" yourself and I had to chuckle because I’d 'been there, done that.' My experience didn’t happen because I was seeking notoriety - but merely because I wanted a job.?

As I neared the end of my senior year of college, it became clear that my name was going to be an issue in the workplace. I had a talk with one of my professors and she agreed that given my credentials and experience, the lack of response to my job applications could be attributed to my name. I look up to my older sister for many reasons, and her ability to navigate her career with a similarly alliterative and uncommon name is one of them. I watched her default to a childhood nickname that wasn’t too far off from her birth name but, because I’m a stickler for precision, there were a few issues that kept me from adopting this approach: 1) my nickname had a completely different spelling and 2) its pronunciation is the most common way people mispronounce my name ending in a “ME-shuh.” I didn’t want to do the work of having people call me something different and then get the false sense they were on the right path to saying my name correctly.?

So I decided to start from scratch. One day I was writing my name on an assignment and that’s when it hit me “L. Butler” or “Elle Butler.” At the time, it was an era of the fictitious character “Elle Woods” from Legally Blonde, Elle magazine and Elle McPherson, so I knew that it was a name people would recognize. I told my teacher the plan and she loved it. I changed my resume and began applying. I knew this would be upsetting to my mother who took the time to give me this beautiful name, but she also dedicated so many hours to make sure that I had everything I needed to have a good future.

In case I was wrong, I decided to test my theory – I’d submit my resume twice for the jobs I wanted - one with my birth name, the other with Elle.

It’s possible that over the last two years we’ve had more conversations about biases than ever before, but in the early 2000s there were still many people who denied that discrimination existed. Personally I knew that bias and stereotypes were at play because during my trial period there were times that Elle got a call back and LaMecia did not. Same resume, different name, different results. I wasn’t savvy enough at the time to track which companies were practicing this behavior - I instead decided I didn’t want to work for a company that was blatant in their discrimination and continued to look for work.?

But, I also needed a job… I didn’t want to change my name, but I also didn’t want it to be the one reason preventing me from obtaining a job.?As an avid reader and someone who was applying for roles that required a lot of writing, I reasoned that I could adopt an alias because some of the best authors have nom de plumes!?

Eventually I stopped applying as LaMecia altogether and solely applied at Elle Butler. Within six months of graduation, Elle landed a job at a major cable television media company.?

It was a wonderful opportunity and to this day, I feel fortunate for the opportunity to work there in that specific period of time. I met some amazing people who I call friends and mentors to this day.

However, in hindsight, I now work for a company that encourages people to bring their “best authentic self” I really wish I could have worked as LaMecia then, because at the time the distinction made me feel like I was living a double life.?

I felt like the people who knew me as "Elle" didn’t actually know the real me and those who had known me for years as "LaMecia" were starting to feel that they also didn’t know me. In fact, I was initially teased by family and friends for changing my name even though I explained why I did it and no legal paperwork was ever involved.?

I went by Elle for four years while I worked in Tennessee. When I returned to Houston, I resumed using my legal name again and but when I applied to business school, I listed Elle as one of my names on the application to help ease the confusion from my recommendation letters. Heck, I even wrote one of my essays about how my name had an impact on my life – I was bold enough to say that because it was a work of my mom’s imagination it made me “subject to self-definition…” And while I still believe that not having a placeholder in the name book has allowed me to live up to my expectations solely, there are still the days where I sit in a focus group or on a call with new people and I listen to people “popcorn” to the next person whose name they know or can easily pronounce and there’s a twinge of sadness that happens. And in those moments, I reflect back to what I honestly have to say one of the best days of my MBA career was when my career counselor told me I could nix Elle and go by LaMecia. As she put it frankly,

“You’re getting an MBA, people can learn to pronounce your name.”

Thank you for the angel that was Shannon Hightower.?

With Shannon’s push, I boldly entered the workforce as LaMecia and I haven’t looked back since. And while my name’s spelling and pronunciation is obliterated consistently on a weekly basis in conversations and email, I will continue to use it if it means making names like mine the norm that you see in business.?

If you are fortunate to work with someone whose name has more letters, accents or syllables than you, I encourage you to do the following:

• Ask them how to pronounce their name, then write it in a way that is correct yet still makes sense to you; practice (independently and discreetly) and DO NOT make a big deal or expect a cookie when you get it right because this is not about you, it’s about you respecting them as an individual
• Check your spelling - in fact, if it is a colleague you work with frequently, add their name to your dictionary to avoid spell check overrides. If you are emailing someone and they've emailed you before or their name is actually represented in their email, take a moment and make sure you've spelled it correctly. That ten second check can help the person on the receiving end have a better day and I promise you that's not an exaggeration.
• Correct others who mispronounce their name?- A couple of years ago, I was selected for a profile at work and it was highlighted in a newsletter but my name was misspelled. A coworker contacted the publishers about the mistake on my behalf because she knew how important it would be for me to see my name spelled correctly. That was indeed the first time I felt like someone acted as an ally on my behalf and I will never forget that act of kindness from Ejeb Dema.

That's why I think Shakespeare got it wrong in Romeo & Juliet when he wrote: “What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell just as sweet.”? I actually believe the name given at origin is relevant and should be honored and nurtured to see the subject bloom in its full and uninhibited capacity.?