Last summer, there was one of those “tell us about yourself” SCA memes bouncing around Facebook. This one included how to pronounce your name.
I filled it out and posted it, using the pronunciation that I had been using since about 2016, while the name was still in the process of being registered.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The thing is, I had been pronouncing it incorrectly, and by doing so, had perpetuated others in pronouncing it incorrectly. I was wrong, and because I didn’t know, other people who looked to me as an example were also wrong.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This post has been a long time coming – believe me, I know. Every time someone has said my name, either in greeting or introducing me, in the past year and change, I have cringed a little on the inside knowing it was incorrect, but also felt like it wasn’t the right time to correct them, due to some context or another.1<\/a><\/sup> Since I was first corrected, I have wanted to do a longer “I was wrong” post, but I also wanted to tie it into a larger conversation about being wrong. But it kept getting put off, then forgotten, then remembered whenever someone said my name. And then I’d feel guilty about not having done it yet.2<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n That changes today. Hi. My SCA name is Ouyang Yingzhao, pronounced OH-yawng YING-chow. OH like so<\/em>, not OO<\/strong> like root<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I should have written this sooner – not over a year after being corrected – and I’m sorry. It’s not the fault of the herald that helped me – they told me how to pronounce it correctly when we decided on the name. I can’t say for sure how the pronunciation got messed up in my head, but it did, and I am very, very sorry for making and perpetuating this mistake, and thereby not doing right by the Chinese language, its people, and their history.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Why is this such a big deal? It’s just a name, right? Names are words – words that are attached to people. And words are powerful. Names are powerful. And this name, this proper noun, is also from a language that I do not speak and a culture that I do not personal identify with. So getting it right matters a lot, and getting it wrong is bad.<\/p>\n\n\n\n All I can do now is acknowledge the mistake and point it out when my name is mispronounced. I am sorry for not doing this sooner. I will, as always, strive to do better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <3<\/p>\n\n\n Hi. My SCA name is Ouyang Yingzhao, pronounced OH-yawng YING-chow. OH like so, not OO like root.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[64,31],"tags":[121,565,96],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4eTPU-l1","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.biblionalia.info\/leah\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1303"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.biblionalia.info\/leah\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.biblionalia.info\/leah\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.biblionalia.info\/leah\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.biblionalia.info\/leah\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1303"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.biblionalia.info\/leah\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1303\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1305,"href":"http:\/\/www.biblionalia.info\/leah\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1303\/revisions\/1305"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.biblionalia.info\/leah\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1303"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.biblionalia.info\/leah\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1303"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.biblionalia.info\/leah\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1303"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}