What Is My Name?

My name is Jaspreet Singh, and it's said as it reads, other than the A being a soft U. My name, personally, is not hard to pronounce, but I've also grown up with it, so my view on it might be a little bit biased.

Growing up, I have had many instances where someone did not even remotely pronounce my name as anything close to what it is--but, I commend them for trying. For example, one of my core memories is asking one of my classmates in 5th grade how to pronounce my last name, as a test, and he responded with "Sign." I certainly did not expect to be turned into an indicator, but I can slightly see where he was coming from, although it was also obvious there was no effort put into even reading "Singh."

Another memory of my name was set on the first day of 7th grade. As my teacher was calling out the different people in the class, he called out the name "Jessica." Now, you must take into consideration that I've heard so many different variations of my name at that point, that I had naturally said "It's actually pronounced as 'Jaspreet.'" To my dismay, he was not trying to say Jaspreet, and I didn't realize until a classmate next to me said so. At that moment, I was mostly just happy my teacher didn't hear me, but now looking back, I was so accustomed to horrible mispronunciations throughout my life that anything that starts with a J could be my name.

As I grew older, I noticed something: people pronounce my name more accurately than they did when I was younger. I still hear a bit of a pause before I hear my name called in attendance, but it's much better than the initial incoherent string of words I was familiar with. Nevertheless, I'm grateful for this change, but still heavily critical of this issue.