The name of the Rosa

The first verses of “El Golem”, one of my favorite poems (yes, I have more than one) by my favorite writer, Jorge Luis Borges goes like this:

Si (como el Griego afirma en el Cratilo)

el nombre es arquetipo de la cosa

en las letras de “rosa” está la rosa

y todo el Nilo en la palabra “Nilo”.

It translates roughly as:

If (as the Greek states in the Cratilo)

the name is the archetype of the thing

in the letters of “rose” is the rose itself

and all the Nile in the word “Nile”.

The poem goes on to talk about the power of words and names, and retells the story of the?Golem of Prague, a creature made of mud, brought to life by an arcane sacred word, and ends up comparing the disappointment the Rabbi who created it, with the disappointment of God looking at humans It’s a great poem, and you can read it in its entirety?here.

(And yes, “The name of the Rose” book by Umberto Eco and the derived 1986 movie with Sean Connery and Christian Slater is probably inspired by the beginning of this poem, since Eco was a big fan of Borges’ work, so much so that he included a character based on him, the blind monk called Jorge de Burgos. The more you know.)

By contrast, you have an adage by William Shakespeare (of which I am sure Borges was perfectly aware) saying that “a rose by any other name would smell as sweet”, which seems to downplay the importance of names (this was in the context of “Romeo & Juliet” where the famous lovers battle against the feud between their families -and their family names.

But how did I get here? And most importantly, why?

I was reading this morning a post shared by Latina Professionals, about?an article with the title “If You Can Pronounce Daenerys Targaryen, Then You Can Learn To Say My Latin American Name”.

That’s a fair and valid point (and -by the way- this is not exclusive to Latin American names: who here feels fully confident pronouncing Gaelic names like Siobhan, Cillian, or Saoirse?). I am more with Borges than with Shakespeare on this: names are an important part of the identity. Of course, there are 3 components of this problem:

1- The inconsistency of the English language is legendary and has been a matter of?much discussion. In essence, the English language is a mish-mash of many other languages, and it carries the scars of two thousand years of invasions and domination, both foreign and their own. Therefore a lot of the pronunciation follows inconsistent rules, somewhat inherited from their source language, somewhat transformed by time and use. This is extensively illustrated by the poem?“The Chaos” by Gerard Nolst Trinité, which is a perfect picture of how confusing the language is.

2- The frequency of hearing the name: certain names are more frequently heard than others, and sometimes you need to use some proxy names or words to help somebody else capture the closest pronunciation. For my own name -Hernán- I used to say “like Herman, but with an N”, but 99% of the time that resulted in something that didn’t resemble much the original, with an unvoiced consonant /h/ instead of a silent one, and it accented the wrong syllable. So now what I use is “like the surname Hernandez but without the -dez”, assuming people are familiar with the surprisingly many baseball players named Hernandez: Keith, Orlando, Félix, Liván, etc. (By the way, did you know that Bruno Mars’ real name is Peter Gene Hernandez? Now you know.)

Of course, everybody who has watched Game of Thrones, or has followed the news over the past decade, became familiar with Daenerys Targaryen’s name pronunciation, because they heard it pronounced so many times on the TV show. That’s why I am also a big fan of services like Name Coach, which allow you to record your name and share it as part of your signature:?https://www.name-coach.com/hernan-chiosso

3- And this is the last and most important of the three: the desire to show respect for the person you’re talking to, by learning how to pronounce their name. Luckily, this has a simple solution: who would be a better teacher than the actual person whose name you’re about to butcher? So you need to build the habit of asking “How do you pronounce your name?” and “Did I say it right?” whenever you run into an unfamiliar name, or you’re unsure how it’s pronounced. It’s such a simple solution and it goes a long way when it comes to building rapport.

So, in summary, it’s 3 simple steps:

1- Understand where the confusion comes from.

2- Use your voice and speak your own name.

3- Ask when you don’t know to show respect.

That’s all. That’s the simplest contribution you can make to honor the heritage, whatever the diversity calendar-dictated flavor of the month.

Did you like what you just read? I enjoyed very much writing it.

Follow me on?Medium?and on?LinkedIn?for more content about #productmanagement, #diversity, #talent and #agility.

(This was originally published on Medium in September 2022).