Learning How To Pronounce My Name
The correct pronunciation of one’s name is something that most people learn at an early age, perhaps as toddlers learning how to speak sentences. I thought I already knew how to say my own name, until I met a girl with the same name as me, same spelling and I noticed she had a different pronunciation of the said name. I was maybe fourteen years old, at a film workshop and one of the speakers was called Ghina, pronounced with the Arabic letter غ which sounds like ‘gh’ whereas I’ve been using the letter ج (‘j’). It was during this experience which made me realise I’ve been pronouncing my own name incorrectly for the longest time, and I think about this story when I’m reflecting on the beauty as well as power of language and words.
I’m still learning to speak Arabic which has been quite difficult because I don’t have access to people I can practice with anymore. My parents don’t speak Arabic either, but this didn’t stop them from choosing an Arabic name for me. My parents read the name ‘Ghina’ and saw that it means ‘wealth’ (as in ‘richness’) in Arabic; they liked this name a lot and the meaning behind it so this was the name they chose for me, but their native language is Bahasa Indonesia so when they pronounced the name it sounded like gee-na ( a bit like ‘ghee’ as in the butter but said lighter if that makes sense). This version of my name was the one that I first learnt to say, then I moved to an English speaking school and people called me G-na (like the letter ‘G’) when they spoke English around me.
There’s the Arabic pronunciation which I thought I knew at the time was the right one, but I discovered that the way I learnt how to say it had a different meaning to what my name actually means. My Arabic teacher heard the pronunciation G-na and she thought my name was spelt ‘Gina’ without the ‘h’, so she taught me to spell my name in Arabic like this: جينا and not this: غنى or غينا. With the Arabic accent my name sounded like jee-na, which made it sound “exotic” but I digress. Now, this isn’t wrong because even I didn’t know there was a difference, but it’s not exactly right either. I’m not a native Arabic speaker so I’m not entirely sure of the origin and meaning of my name (both spellings starting with غ and ج), but the one that my parents intended to give me because of its meaning was the name starting with غ which is arguably harder to pronounce compared to ج. If I’m not mistaken, جينا means ‘melody’ and غنى means ‘rich’. When I asked my parents which one they intended to call me by, it was the latter. Yup, even my own parents couldn’t pronounce my name correctly so, who even am I?
Why am I telling a story of the many ways of pronunciations I’ve used and heard my name spoken as? Well, I used to think that there was a correct way of how to say my name. Because I’ve been educated in the English language, I thought English was the right way to say and think things (I was wrong, obviously). I grew to not like the Bahasa Indonesia pronunciation, I didn’t like the way that it sounded for some reason (it was the internalised self-hatred due to white supremacy). In addition, my relationship with my native tongue hasn’t been so great; my English was getting better and stronger but my Bahasa was growing weaker, though I still use Bahasa words that don’t translate well enough into English in my daily vocabulary.
I was picked on when I was younger for the way that I spoke Bahasa Indonesia with my accent that’s been Westernised after having to use English almost all the time. This discouraged me to speak in my native language, so I stopped trying because I thought I needed to be perfect at something in order to practice it (also wrong, again). The bullies (they were mostly if not all boys) called me ‘Gina’ as in vagina, and they found it astoundingly hilarious when they called me that, which I couldn’t understand. It was stupid because this (1) wasn’t my name, (2) wasn’t even funny, (3) wasn’t original, but they still mocked my name in front of me to my face anyway like they were the first one to come up with this joke (they were not), even though I’ve said more than once that I didn’t like being called that. The Arabic pronunciation frustrated me too because no one, except for the people who could speak Arabic, could pronounce it. I went by G-na which became the English version of my name for most of my life, but having only one pronunciation of my name made no sense because I existed in spaces wherein English is not the language that was largely spoken (though it may seem that English is vastly known to everyone thanks to colonialism).
When I studied at an Indonesian university and was enrolled in an English-based course, I would use and hear English in classroom environments and then fumble my way into speaking Bahasa Indonesia in social events (my really good friends were frustrated for me that they gave me a pass and said “you know what, just speak English, it’s fine!” and that was that). Because I was first introduced to people at my university in the classrooms, they knew me as G-na, but when they spoke in their Indonesian accents it sounded like chee-na (like the country China but spoken in Bahasa) and that is just not my name. Thus gee-na was reborn, not غنى or غينا which is said like gh-eh-na, nobody at my university could pronounce that without choking on their own spit (though there were some people who tried, it was funny and sweet of them!).
I still go by G-na most of the time, but I’m open to the other pronunciations spoken in other dialects. I still exist in spaces in which Arabic is widely spoken, I go home to my parent’s house in Southwest Asia every six months and it’s honestly refreshing hearing my name in the Arabic dialect and accent because that’s where it came from. There was one time an Uber driver called me gh-eh-na and back then I was correcting people who didn’t say G-na. The driver apologised but then I apologised back to him because he was right. And that is the beauty and power of language, there is no absolute wrong or right, just incorrect and what feels right.
So those are my names: gee-na, G-na, gh-eh-na, jee-na say it in either of those ways or don’t say it at all!
(Last edited: 16th March 2021)
