According to Aminatta Forna, the British have a problem with her name. The whole article is a thinly veiled accusation of racism against 60 million people, which is a nice bit of generalising. Apparently, it is awful that we cannot get her name right – either spelling or pronunciation – and we have the effrontery to make amusing jokes at the expense of peoples’ names. This makes the British so much more awful than those nice Americans who can, apparently.
My surname is unusual and I am English born. It has been misspelled and mispronounced for as long as I can recall. I had managed to get over it by the time I reached adolescence and I suggest Aminatta does likewise, otherwise she might end up becoming a tiresome professional race-whinger writing for the Guardian. Being of French origin, I notice that the French manage to get my surname right, but they will insist upon spelling my first name Marc, rather than Mark – damned racists, eh? Perhaps I should see if the Guardian want a CiF article complaining about it.
My God what a dickhead. If I had a quid for every time someone got my surname wrong I’d have a nice little chunk of cash in my account. I don’t think it’s because people are howwible wacists. It’s because my name is unusual, like Amitwatta’s.
Also, why the fuck would you write about how annoying it is when people ask what your name is, then spend two interminable paragraphs explaining what it means? The crassest part is the highly dubious anecdote about someone making a comment about jihad. I’m calling bullshit on that.
Comment is Free really is a staggering waste of time, can literally any idiot write the first thing that comes into their empty head and have it published?
Providing you press all the politically correct buttons, I think the answer is “yes”.
French pronunciation eh LR? I think you should sue!
My surname is very close to a common derogatory name for gay men. Yes I got over it.
Recently at work we started getting large jobs off a company with the same surname as me. So I gleefully started using the derogatory term when refering to them. When others used the term, I would sharply rebuke them, telling them that I was invoking “Tarantino’s Nigger Perogative”. That is to say that black people seem to be able to use the word “nigger”, even when refering to themselves or other black people, but white people cannot use the word at all, even in an historic context. I first noticed this on early Tarantino films – hence the concept of Tarantino’s Nigger Perogative.
Should think herself lucky her name is not Kate and get on with life.
(She must be sick of hearing that)
This post gave me a strange feeling of deja vue. Oh yes:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/mar/03/racist-question-brown-answer-curious
I blogged that one under the title ‘chippy foreign bird’, and I guess we’ve got another. Pardon me, Aminatta, it may be a common name somewhere, but I’ve never come across it before. Blame your parents for naming you, not us for not knowing, and why not adopt a diminutive or nickname, or alternatively shut the f*** up?
My surname is unusual and I am English born.
Siobhan Featherstonehaugh – is that you??! After all these years…
(‘Shu-VAWN FAN-shaw’ for those too lazy to look them up.)
“So if he’d just met someone called Mary, would he think it amusing to ask if she was still a virgin.”
Yes, probably he would, the “British” having a penchant for puns and wordplay.
Staggeringly solipsistic grievance-monger with her ‘poor little me’ victimhood all out on display. Was she paid for that?
“Comment is Free really is a staggering waste of time, can literally any idiot write the first thing that comes into their empty head and have it published?”
This is the website that employs the likes of Bidisha, so I’m guessing that question’s been well and truly answered!
Aminatta??? Think she’s been on the Amanita myself.
Nah, it’s Cholmondley Warner…