Countless studies have been made of factors affecting Global Collaboration… but one factor seems absent from them. This is the cultural diversity of personal names. It’s as if this factor is a non-issue; which has always surprised me, because in my long career in a global corporation I’ve concluded that it definitely matters. Read on…

Strange names leave you clueless in so many ways!

If you work in a global corporation you are likely to be communicating routinely with remote team mates named, say, Ayelet Gilboa, Szendrey Erzsébet, John McDonald, SK Wong, Dögg Jónsdóttir, Phan Tấn Dũng and Pavel Andreyevich Polonsky.

Now, consider that often:

• You have no idea what many of these names mean. What sounds to you like gibberish may mean in that person’s tongue “Rose petal”, or “Lion cub”, or “Beautiful”, or “From Ngeysu province”.
• You have no idea what gender some of them represent. The resulting gaffes may seem funny, but maybe not to the name’s owner, not after a few times…
• You have no idea which part is the first name, and which the last. Many cultures (e.g. in China and Hungary) put the family name first. And there may even not be a family name in there – many cultures use diverse subsets of Given, Family, Patronymic, Matronymic, Clan, and other names.
  (A story: years ago I met a US coworker who had a last name so long it barely fit on his badge. When I gently commented, he said it wasn’t even his last name – in his culture they had no last names at all; he’d chosen it in a hurry when he immigrated to the US. I asked, why did he choose such a long one? Well, he said, in the native script of his people, this name has only four letters!)
• You have no idea how some names should be pronounced, which may be quite unlike the way you’d intuitively read them.
• You may have no idea what culture or country a name originated in – what its context is.

The negative impact of mishandling unfamiliar names

There are many downsides to treating a name outside its cultural context. For example:

• You may inadvertently offend by not grasping which form of a name to use in given circumstances. Take Russian, where the rules for which name parts to use for each situation and level of familiarity fill a page in Wikipedia.
• A name that means Rose petal in language A may sound like a word that means something else in language B – including words with nasty or ridiculous meanings. Take for instance the Icelandic female name Dögg. It means Dew, but it’s easy to see how an English speaker may mock it (without even knowing how it’s pronounced). As the world flattens, it becomes inevitable that people in one country will childishly ridicule some distant coworker’s name behind their back – I’ve seen it happen.
• The current President of the US is taking flak because his middle name sounds Islamic; think what some Americans would have made of a coworker with such a name in late 2001. The less you know about the context, the more prejudice might result. Global collaboration is tricky enough without adding this ambiguity.
• Some employees in global companies just give up and distort their names, or adopt English ones, to avoid the hassle. Others may cloak their true names, hiding them behind initials or declining to share them. I remember the time when an Indian colleague in the US, introducing himself by first name only, responded to my inquiry with “you don’t want my last name, you couldn’t spell it anyway”. I insisted, and made a point of memorizing its spelling nonetheless – if it was his name, part of who he was, what right had I to disrespect it?!

I wonder what the cost is to one’s self-image when one has to disown one’s real name. Do you lose respect for yourself and your culture when you do it? Or do you feel disdain for the ones who are too ignorant to appreciate this culture? Either way, it doesn’t make collaboration any better.

The benefit of name awareness

In addition to averting offense, being aware at a deeper level of one’s remote coworkers’ names has a clear benefit to removing that major barrier to virtual teamwork: mistrust. Getting to know coworkers as humans plays a critical role; just exchanging a photo has been shown to effect a real improvement in teamwork for people who have never met in person. Social Media help in attaining such closeness – which is why I strongly advocate allowing them into the workplace. And becoming familiar with a foreign name’s essence can help the process.

Consider the jarring “Aha!” moment when, usually on traveling to their land, you accidentally hear your coworker called by someone from their own circle with a name you’ve never heard. Suddenly it clicks into place: Oh, JC really means Jin-Chan! Or, Wow, It’s pronounced ha-moo-TAL, not CHAY-mew-tal!… It’s a little thing, but people haven’t evolved to work across oceans in real time like we do today; any little chink in the cultural barrier can help reduce the alienation and grow empathy.

So, what can you do about this?

Here are some actions I’d advise you to consider:

• Educate people to be sensitive to others’ feelings about their names. For instance, one thing I’ve always insisted on was to educate my subordinates to properly spell the names of people they corresponded with. Not bothering to spell a name properly is really a sign of indifference, which translates to disrespect. Likewise for proper pronunciation. And of course, you should never stand for any ridicule of a name – not in a school playground and not in a corporate environment!
• Encourage people to ask their coworkers about their names – politely and respectfully. “Am I pronouncing Zeldes correctly? I haven’t encountered this name before”, or “If I may ask, is Erzsébet the first or last name? I’m afraid I’m ignorant about Hungarian naming norms”. Or do it as a group inclusion exercise when a team forms.
• Correct promptly the surprisingly common occurrence of having a name misspelled in formal records, such as the company directory, or an email address, or an employee badge. I meet many people with misspelled names on their badges; when I ask how come, they say they were new hires and were embarrassed to ask for a correction. A person’s name is worth the cost of a new badge!
• Include this subject in global sensitivity or diversity training courses, if you provide any in your company (and you should, for many good reasons).
• Harness technology to help: The latest version of IBM Connections, one of the best corporate social tools, actually has a little loudspeaker icon next to employee names in the directory – click it and you hear the name as it should be pronounced. Wayda go!
• Correct people with a smile if they mispronounce your own name: “Nope! it’s pronounced…”

So – does this make sense to you? Are you (or your company) doing any of this?

Related Posts

Okay, You Got Workforce Diversity… Now What?