No, Not Like The City in Florida

I've definitely heard that one before.

Do you think you'd process me differently if I had a different name? Be honest.

I have thought a number of times about changing my name, most frequently when I'm in new situations where I’m meeting a bunch of people at the same time. The reason I’ve considered this so many times is that almost every time I meet someone my name becomes a sticking point almost immediately. You wouldn’t think it would be so complicated being that my name is a name people are used to seeing, but it’s pronounced slightly differently (or-LON-do rather than or-LAND-o) and that tends to throw people off.

“Yolanda?”

“OrlOndo.”

“Fernando?”

“OrlOndo.”

“Armando?”

…And so on and so on until I die.

By the time I’ve explained my name, people are usually over it and have their own opinions on what my name is and how it’s pronounced. Having a mildly difficult name has taught me a few things about how people learn and process names. Firstly, most people subconsciously visualize the name in order to remember it. Like literally visualize the name spelled out in their heads so they can process what I’m saying. Which is one reason it’s really hard for people not to say orLANDo upon first meeting me. Second, we’re used to Anglicizing names regardless of their origin, so it’s really hard for the American brain to pronounce things differently. It makes sense, most of the people I interact with speak English.

Before we get too much further, here’s a primer on my name and its pronunciation:

Telling people my name leads to the type of confrontation I’m not normally in the mood to have. First I have to try to get people to understand what I’m saying, which is harder than you’d think. If I say my name the way I’d say it to my family, most people don’t understand what I’m saying. I know that sounds crazy based on the recording above but people truly have no idea what I’m saying, usually thinking I’m saying “Armando” or “Fernando.” If you understood what I’m saying in the recording above that probably sounds ridiculous, but if you don’t have prior knowledge it’s actually pretty hard for the American ear to understand what I’m saying because my pronunciation is atypical. And people tend to look for the familiar when they hear new names, they want to conform the name to a name their brain has already processed rather than learn a new name/pronunciation.

This seems like a small difference that shouldn’t matter much and quite frankly it really doesn’t bother me when new people I meet say my name the Florida way. If you’re a close friend and you’ve known me for more than six months, it might start to get weird that you haven’t caught on to the name - but mostly to our other friends who would think you didn’t really know me. But I would never expect a new person to catch that nuance right away.

I guess the thing that bothers me about telling people my name is the implicit assumption of whiteness and the requirement that I explain my non-whiteness. The way my family pronounces my name is slightly more (but not totally) the Spanish pronunciation. It’s like Valley Girl Spanish. If I pronounced my name the Florida way, it would be easy-peasy. But that pronunciation feels off to me, it literally does not feel like my name.

I was at a warehouse party in LA a few months ago and someone straight up said, “That’s not your name” when I introduced myself. So I had to explain my Mexican heritage and why my name is pronounced the way it is. I have done this more times than I could possibly count in my life. And it’s usually the last thing I want to do when I’m out trying to have a good time.

When I was a junior in high school, after giving my teachers a full three years to learn my name’s pronunciation, I gave up and started signing my name “Londo” on all my papers. “Londo” is a nickname for “Orlando” that would normally be spelled “Lando.” But even Spanish speakers have a hard time not pronouncing it the Calrissian way (LAND-o) when it’s spelled like that so I replaced the “a” with an “o.”

I resent having to explain my ethnic background every time I meet someone new.

I have thought so many times about changing my name to a name that is easy to understand and that elicits zero follow up questions. The anxiety about explaining my name means that new relationships have to survive a mild form of antagonism before they can progress. Non-white people usually get it fast, it’s the white people who have trouble with it.

When I turned forty I thought about changing my name to see how it would affect the way I felt meeting new people. For the past few years I’ve used the name “Logan” when I am in a space where I’m meeting lots of people at once (usually group vacations with friends or at big parties where you meet people you’ll never see again). But something about changing your name too late in life seemed weird. Like why is it fine for someone to change their name at sixteen but if you did that at thirty-eight it would seem like you were having an identity crisis? Am I alone in that? Like it seems weird for an older person to change their first name, right?

I find that gay men respond completely differently to “Logan” than they do to “Orlando.” Logan seems sexy and simple. “Or-LON-do” casts me either as OTHER or pretentious. Or both. Hell hath no fury like a white person mildly inconvenienced by having to learn a new pronunciation.

I think in general minorities are asked to explain their non-whiteness more than white people are asked to explain their whiteness. I went skiing this past weekend and met a very handsome non-white guy. I’m terrible at guessing peoples’ ages or ethnicities so I guess I clocked that he wasn’t white and then didn’t think about it again. I’m definitely not an I DON’T SEE COLOR person, but I usually don’t try to guess where people are from (or if I do I just assume everyone is Latino) because I’m bad at it. But the older white gay guys at the bar immediately started trying to guess this guy’s country of origin.

When I heard these two guys grilling my friend, eventually guessing correctly, “Pakistan,” I had an immediate reaction.

“Wanna guess my ethnicity now?” I said with wild eyes, clearly annoyed.

I really wanted them to guess because I knew they’d get it wrong. I was not sober so I wasn’t holding my tongue. But I was genuinely annoyed because I know the feeling of people asking you to explain your background when you’re just trying to get a drink. It’s labor and you don’t always want to do it. And for the record, it’s really not cool to straight up ask people what their race is when you’re meeting them. Like it’s fine to have cultural conversations but those should be held for further into a relationship as part of a more in-depth discovery process, not seconds into meeting someone at a bar.

Another things that’s annoying about my name is that it elicits the same jokes over and over again and that makes it hard for me to see new people I’m meeting as individuals rather than a big blob of people that all have the same simple brain.

“ARE YOU FROM FLORIDA!?!” is something I am asked almost every single time I tell someone my name. It’s weird to have a cliche like this, one that only applies to you personally, because most other people cannot see that it’s a cliche. To these people, it probably seems like a natural quip to make. Inoffensive! Their brains visualize the word “Orlando,” they think if Disney World and Florida, and they make the joke. Totally understandable. But when you heard the same thing over and over again for, I dunno, forty years, it starts to get super stale.

One of the weird things about being from a mixed cultural background while being white presenting is that you get exposed to a lot more subtle racism and micro aggressions than you might expect. White people let their guard down around other white people. And sometimes they say racist shit, either purposefully or by accident out of habit. And this is one of the reasons I’ve kept my name, despite the fact that it has done me absolutely no favors professionally and quite frankly has cock blocked a lot of opportunities. I want to represent my heritage and since I don’t have brown skin or a wealth of recipes passed down from my Mexican grandparents, my name is really the only way I can do that.

It took me a long time to appreciate my name and to see it as a small way that I could represent diversity by using a Latino sounding name. My brother’s name is Miguel and he’s nearly as pale as I am. I think part of what’s fun about our names is that they expose how diverse the Latinx population is. Some of us look white and we can hear what you’re saying behind our backs because you’re saying it, unknowingly, directly to our faces.

There’s obviously a vast amount of privilege in the fact that if I wanted to I could just change my name to “Logan Smith” and erase the kind of uncomfortable confrontation I have meeting new people. But I guess my point in bringing all this up is that we should be beyond this. People don’t really owe each other an explanation of their names and why they are pronounced the way they are. Instead of interrogating people as to why their name is pronounced that way and “where they are from” it’s possible just to try and emulate their pronunciation as best you can.

Or do what I do and just pretend you understood what they said, smile, nod, and never even attempt to say their name. That way you’ve avoided being subtly racist and also avoided having to pronounce an annoying-to-pronounce name. Like Orlando.