I’ve been pronouncing my own name wrong for almost my entire life, not because I don’t know how to pronounce it, but because other people don’t.

Malak is a popular Egyptian female name, but growing up in the suburbs of Manchester and attending a majority-white school, I very quickly learnt to adapt it to suit everyone around me. This meant either shortening it to Mal or anglicising the vowels so it sounded closer to something they were more familiar with. Even then, more often than not, I’m met with Malek or Malik. People not knowing how my name is supposed to be pronounced has become normal. But should it be?

Our names are a deeper reflection of our identities, our heritage and our culture. So, when our names are butchered, it can feel like a part of our identity is too.

Which, for members of a diaspora, is something we’re often already grappling with. 

For Sevil, a Turkish Cypriot/English Muslim in London, growing up with a name that was unfamiliar to her predominantly English classmates felt alienating. “It was a bit scary at times…I felt left out and different, even though I am half English,” she says. “My name is Sevil (emphasis on the v), but it usually gets mispronounced as Seville (like the city). Seville feels like a facade because it isn’t genuinely what my name is. It’s fake and adjusted to be more palatable for the UK.”

Egypt-born, London-raised Alya M reflects on using the Arabic pronunciation of her name (where the A is a 3ein sound) versus the anglicised version, “I have changed how I say it depending on who I am speaking to. It feels like two different sides of my personality.”

As someone who has predominantly gone by Mal for most of my life, I relate to what Alya is saying in that Mal and Malak feel like two different sides of me. As does the Arabic pronunciation of my name versus the English one.

Pronounced properly, Malak feels like home. It feels like a side of me that requires no explanation or justification.

The Egyptian Malak is a Malak who can relax, who can introduce herself without having to brace for questioning or fear of mispronunciation that, whilst easy to brush off, can become exhausting. A Malak who can exist in the world as her whole self. But then the English Mal is the person I spend most of my time as. She’s the most prevalent; she’s the side of me that feels the easiest and sometimes the safest. The side of me that rarely feels the need to explain herself. So I’m left wondering which one is the most me? I’m not sure. It’s confusing when, for so many of us, the alternative versions were born out of a need to fit into the Western world. 

It’s a battle British Palestinian Rana finds exhausting. “I find it easier to just introduce myself with the pronunciation that they (non-Arabic-speaking or non-ethnic-minority individuals) know. Even though it’s not my name. It’s just easier. If I pronounce it properly, I’ll only get asked again and again.”

But who is it easier for? Zoha, a British Pakistani Muslim living in London, reflects on the nuances of whose feelings are really being prioritised when it comes to these sorts of exchanges, “When someone says my name and immediately follows with, ‘am I saying that right?,’ I know it’s because they’re trying to be polite, but it bothers me before I’ve even said a single word.”

Pakistani British Raisa, who was raised in Hong Kong and lives in the UAE, talks about “quietly” correcting people when they get her name wrong, and British Egyptian Alya S says, “There’s a desire to reassure the people who are pronouncing my name wrong that it’s okay, it’s a “foreign” name. I find that I am putting them first to make sure they don’t get embarrassed when, really, I’m the one whose name got mispronounced.”

What else is put to the side when we do this? When we go out of our way to reassure others at our own expense?

Because, at this point, it’s about more than a name. It’s about a willingness to make ourselves smaller for the benefit of others.

I recognise what both Raisa and Alya are talking about in myself. When met with lazy assumptions or sweeping statements about my identity or culture, the desire to not make a fuss often ends up winning because the alternative can be exhausting. I remember correcting somebody who said to me, “the Middle East was nothing more than a camel and two donkeys before the West came along,” only to be shouted at and told that I was being “too sensitive.”

Then there’s the wilful ignorance, as Raisa puts it, that emerges when the same people continue to mispronounce her name despite being corrected, a sentiment shared by Alya M.“What annoys me is when people can’t even say Alya after I’m already making it easier for them. People say Ayla a lot. It feels like they don’t care enough to be paying attention.” 

Speaking to these women, all from different backgrounds but with the same shared burden that is the need to explain or apologise for something as fundamental as a name, I can’t help but wonder what we’re missing out on when we adapt and mould our names to suit the societies we find ourselves in.  

“When people say my name properly, I feel really seen. It touches my soul and makes me feel more connected to who I am and where I come from,” shares Sevil.

“I have the exact same name as my Turkish nan, so I’ve realised it’s actually a really special part of me that I should be proud of.”

For many of us in the diaspora, our names can signify parts of ourselves that – living away from our homelands – we rarely get the opportunity to connect with. Despite not speaking Arabic herself, Bengali/British Sabira talks about her relationship to the Arabic meaning behind her name, “My name means patience. I feel really connected to that. My name was given to me by my grandad, which I’m honoured by because I was really close to him.” And Raisa, whose name was chosen by her grandmother, shares how, when undergoing cancer treatment, her Arabic name gave her strength – “I had lots of doctors and nurses reading my name and saying things like, ‘you know your name means chief or boss? You are a boss!’”

There’s an Arabic proverb I love which translates to “every person has a share of their name.” It expresses the idea that our names can be a reflection of our personalities. Or perhaps it’s that our personalities reflect our names. Either way, it makes me think about how intrinsic our names can be in shaping our own perception of our place in the world. Malak means angel in Arabic, which I used to be embarrassed about. I felt as though people would hear that and think I was bigheaded, as if it was self-proclaimed! The older I get, the less I see it like that and the more I feel blessed to have been given a name with such a beautiful meaning at its core. 

Yasmin, who’s British with Egyptian and Cypriot roots, talks about her very deliberate approach to the way she pronounces her own name, “I grew up being able to navigate all the rooms I was in with my name, choosing which one to use depending on the situation. Recently, I’ve been leading with the Arabic pronunciation. That’s not because I don’t value the other parts of me;

it’s because the Arab identity feels like it’s carried the most shame. So I want to lean into it more with love and pride.”

I, like Yasmin, am on my own journey of feeling love and compassion for my Egyptian identity. Today, when asked about my name, rather than skirt over it with a “you can just call me Mal,” I tell people that Malak is an Arabic name and that I’m British Egyptian. Growing up, I used to want nothing more than to distance myself from that part of me in an attempt to fit into a predominantly white sector of British society. But at what cost? 

In avoiding my name, I’d been avoiding my Egyptian heritage, erasing a part of myself that – increasingly – feels the most important to be connected to. It’s interesting because I’ve never actually spent more than a couple of months at a time in Egypt, yet the pull I feel towards the country and what it represents is so strong that it’s almost subconscious. Whenever I think about where it is that feels like home, it’s the sun and the sand of the land of my ancestors. Because this is about more than nicknames or different versions of the same vowels. It’s about roots. It’s about feeling seen in our entirety, not just the parts of us that “make sense” in the eyes of the beholder.