Nadie debe llamarse Krikorian. Suena feo. Suena a un habitante de esos planetas que solo existen en la serie Star Trek. Si usted llega a los Estados Unidos con ese nombre, deberá cambiarlo inmediatamente. Si viene a vivir a Puerto Rico, ni se diga. Debe usar uno mejor, tal vez acortarlo, pero con mucho cuidado que no le vaya a quedar más feo, como por ejemplo: Korian, que suena a coreano, a asiático inescrutable, a comunista tal vez.
Mark Krikorian es el director de un centro de estudios de inmigración, de orientación derechista, de los “lunatic fringe.” En su columna Krikorian despotricó contra la manera inusual en la que se pronuncia el apellido Sotomayor, en referencia a la nominada de Obama a la Corte Suprema, que como todos tiene sus defectos. El suyo es ser mujer boricua e hispana en USA, con apellido raro. Encima de eso le gustan las patitas de cerdo… asunto que también ha discutido la derecha lunática en la prensa, aunque parezca increible. (Por cierto, el domingo preparé unas patitas con habichuelas frescas rosadas, que me quedaron deliciosas). Para conocer más sobre la juez Sonia Sotomayor pueden visitar el Huffington Post y acceder a varios artículos sobre la nominada.
Que disfruten la locura de la derecha lunática:
So, are we supposed to use the Spanish pronunciation, so-toe-my-OR, or the natural English pronunciation, SO-tuh-my-er, like Niedermeyer? The president pronounced it both ways, first in Spanish, then after several uses, lapsing into English. Though in the best “Pockiston” tradition, he also rolled his r’s in Puerto Rico.
* * *
Most e-mailers were with me on the post on the pronunciation of Judge Sotomayor’s name (and a couple griped about the whole Latina/Latino thing — English dropped gender in nouns, what, 1,000 years ago?). But a couple said we should just pronounce it the way the bearer of the name prefers, including one who pronounces her name “freed” even though it’s spelled “fried,” like fried rice. (I think Cathy Seipp of blessed memory did the reverse — “sipe” instead of “seep.”) Deferring to people’s own pronunciation of their names should obviously be our first inclination, but there ought to be limits. Putting the emphasis on the final syllable of Sotomayor is unnatural in English (which is why the president stopped doing it after the first time at his press conference), unlike my correspondent’s simple preference for a monophthong over a diphthong, and insisting on an unnatural pronunciation is something we shouldn’t be giving in to.
For instance, in Armenian, the emphasis is on the second syllable in my surname, just as in English, but it has three syllables, not four (the “ian” is one syllable) — but that’s not how you’d say it in English (the “ian” means the same thing as in English — think Washingtonian or Jeffersonian). Likewise in Russian, you put the emphasis in my name on the final syllable and turn the “o” into a schwa, and they’re free to do so because that’s the way it works in their language. And should we put Asian surnames first in English just because that’s the way they do it in Asia? When speaking of people in Asia, okay, but not people of Asian origin here, where Mao Tse-tung would properly have been changed to Tse-tung Mao. Likewise with the Mexican practice of including your mother’s maiden name as your last name, after your father’s surname.
This may seem like carping, but it’s not. Part of our success in assimilation has been to leave whole areas of culture up to the individual, so that newcomers have whatever cuisine or religion or so on they want, limiting the demand for conformity to a smaller field than most other places would. But one of the areas where conformity is appropriate is how your new countrymen say your name, since that’s not something the rest of us can just ignore, unlike what church you go to or what you eat for lunch. And there are basically two options — the newcomer adapts to us, or we adapt to him. And multiculturalism means there’s a lot more of the latter going on than there should be.