An Invisible Minority Report: On Being Spicy Hungarian "Mayonnaise" - Equality, Diversity & Inclusion (EDI) with a Zesty Twist! ;)

Hello! My name is Tamás…

In other words, /?t?ma??/ …not /?t???m?ɑ?s?/, /?t?mɑ?s/ …or even /?tɑ.m?s/ which is how I ended up being called throughout my school years in Canada. Immediately, you see the first problem of how I’m named versus how I’m called! ??

After many decades of linguistic suffering, self deprecatory abnegation and accepting anglophonic approximations, and travelling abroad and locally teaching English as a Second/Foreign Language (ESL/EFL) where I was forced to learn, approximate and imitate many amazing names, I have come up with a new game leveraging my anglo-anomalous name against current customer experience/service trends… specifically whenever there’s an opportunity to hand over a rewards card or offer a phone number to link to a customer rewards program. After providing my ID number, I wait with perverse patience for the customer service representative to try and pronounce my name. After smiling widely with a friendly, perverse but slightly mischievous twinkle in my eye, I almost invariably have a menu of fun responses to choose from ranging from:

“Fairly close!”

“Not bad!”

“Good try!”

…but once in a while I'm genuinely, pleasantly surprised by a polyglot who either gets it right or comes extremely close! Upon further conversation, I often discover that the person has some connection to Hungary (perhaps a recent trip) or Hungarians (relatives or friends) or my new favourite: they have seen (and remember) the “Budapest scene” in the MCU’s “Black Widow” movie! Thank you MCU! Budapesti Hungarians around the Globe thank you and rejoice! Haha!

Needless to say, I try to be kind and let most people off the hook and let them skip my surname, which is even harder/worse for anglophones! ??

The next problem is that we Hungarians appear white but we aren’t… maybe we’re an off-white! I think I would love to be “Sea Pearl”, “Silver Satin”, “Frostine”, “Moonshine” or even just a slightly spicy, "Torma"-flavoured* but more pedestrian shade of “Mayonnaise”! Haha! ??

I used to tick the “Caucasian” box on most forms until a Russian colleague of mine pointed out, quite correctly, that Hungarians are actually Uralic people. Ever since then, I tick “Other” and try to enter “Uralic”… or even “Ugric” when I’m feeling especially perverse! Haha! ??

One weird phenomenon (among others) that can happen when you come to a new country as an infant or pre-teen with a family that doesn’t speak the local language, is that you can grow up without any accent in EITHER language! I often get comments whenever I go back to Hungary about “how good my English is” which initially used to make me do a double-take, having forgotten that English IS, in fact, actually my second language! So weird! These days I consider Hungarian my “native” language since I was born with it. While I think of English as my “mother” tongue since it “raised” me.

With all the discussion around EDI (Equality, Diversity and Inclusion) these days, I was recently reminded that as a child of communist defectors, political refugees and immigrants, I have lived this experience of discrimination and xenophobia for decades and have simple grown accustomed to it. Interestingly, I still experience echoes of it today when I receive postal mail addressed to Ms. Tamás… These days I just smile, and add another entry to my late Father’s lengthy list of misspellings and misappellations of our names which I still maintain for fun.

While I’m rarely bullied and beaten up (including emotionally) anymore these days as I was daily and mercilessly as a child inside and outside the home, it’s still clear to me that I’m very much NOT exactly a white guy but in fact some shade of spicy “Mayonnaise” …and certainly not a "regular guy", but that’s a gender-based bias story for another time! ??

*"Torma" is Hungarian for Horseradish! ;)

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