“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose / By any other name would smell as sweet.”

Shakespeare’s words are often invoked to argue that names are trivial, that they are interchangeable and ultimately meaningless. But for many of us, this could not be further from the truth.

In many South Asian families, names are not given to babies before or at birth. Rather, they are given months after, at the Naamkaran Ceremony, where the mother whispers the child’s name in their ear—the first time the name is uttered out loud. The name itself is mulled and debated over, ultimately chosen for its meaning. The meaning of the name is what the family hopes the child will embody, the values the baby will cherish and the person they will aspire to be.

And yet, many of us are forced to give our names up in subtle, everyday ways. Often in classrooms, teachers and classmates do not take the time to learn how to pronounce names, even in smaller settings where it would not take much effort to learn. Instead, we are given nicknames we did not choose or asked to make our names “easier” to say. In cafes, baristas hesitate, stumble or abandon our names altogether—calling out approximations, shortening them or replacing them with something else entirely.

It might seem like a minor inconvenience, but soon we confront ourselves: Am I being difficult, or am I accepting a version of myself that is easier for someone else to say? Often, it’s the latter. What is framed as practical becomes a quiet form of erasure. Over time, we learn to respond to nicknames that are not ours and to accept mispronunciations as inevitable.

The potential harms of this phenomenon are seen on a global scale. Research from the U.S., Great Britain and Australia confirms that applicants with anglicized or traditionally “white-sounding” names receive more callbacks compared to those with non-anglicized names, even when qualifications are the same. This leads to some candidates with “foreign-sounding” names intentionally changing their names on applications to improve their job prospects.

But it was inscribed in many of us, as early as possible, that names have importance. They hold power.

So what is truly in a name?

It is not just a moniker or a label. It is an emblem of our culture. It is a link to our heritage. And it is an honor to our histories.

So every time someone chooses their linguistic comfort over our identities, we feel undervalued. We should not have to shrink parts of ourselves so that others do not have to go outside their comfort zones. Learning a name is one of the simplest, yet most meaningful, acts of recognition we can offer another person.

A rose may smell as sweet by any other name, but people are not flowers, and names are not interchangeable. They are chosen with purpose and spoken with love. The least we can do is say them as they were meant to be said.