Why Getting Students' Names Right Matters More Than You…

i still remember my third grade teacher, Mrs. Patterson.

she was the first teacher who got my name right on the first day of school. not "Bridget." not "Bri-something." she looked at the class roster, saw "Brijhette," and asked me directly: "how do you say your name?"

i told her. she repeated it back correctly. she wrote it down phonetically in her notes.

for the entire year, she never got it wrong once.

that was over twenty years ago. i remember her not because she was the best teacher i ever had — but because she made me feel seen in a way most teachers didn't bother to.

what the research says

this isn't just my experience.

a landmark 2012 study by Kohli & Solórzano, "Teachers, Please Learn Our Names!," documented how repeated name mispronunciation created feelings of shame, embarrassment, and cultural alienation in students of color — regardless of whether the mispronunciation was intentional. the message students received: your name is not worth learning. by extension: you are not worth the effort.

a 2025 Preply survey found that 1 in 3 students reported experiencing discrimination related to their names. 98% had experienced mispronunciation. and 61% said they had changed or shortened their name to make it easier for others — effectively erasing part of their identity to reduce social friction.

research published in the Journal of Emerging Investigators found that non-white students were 2.55 times more likely to experience name-based microaggressions than white students.

the cumulative effect of these small daily slights is significant. when your name gets consistently wrong, you don't just feel embarrassed — you start to believe that your presence in the classroom, the office, the institution requires constant justification.

the cultural complexity teachers need to know

name pronunciation isn't only about phonetics. there are real structural barriers to getting it right, and educators deserve to understand them.

challenging authority figures is not universal. in many cultures — particularly in East Asian, Southeast Asian, West African, and Caribbean communities — directly correcting an elder or authority figure is considered inappropriate or disrespectful. a student might never correct their teacher, even after years of mispronunciation, because the cultural expectation is deference, not correction. teachers should build in explicit, low-stakes opportunities for students to share their name's pronunciation.

some names have sounds that don't exist in English. tonal languages, click consonants, aspirated sounds — these are genuinely difficult to approximate in English, and imperfect phonetics are still better than silence. an approximation made in good faith, practiced consistently, means more than a correct pronunciation attempted once and abandoned.

some names attract bullying. certain names, when filtered through an English-language ear, sound like slurs or vulgar words. this is a real and painful situation, particularly for younger students. if a family has developed a chosen name or anglicized pronunciation specifically to navigate this, that choice deserves respect — not correction.

tools for classrooms

for teachers:

• ask on day one. write it down phonetically in your gradebook immediately.
• practice before class, not in front of students.
• use student name cards on desks with phonetic spelling — visible to you at all times.
• don't ask students to teach the class their name. that puts the labor back on the kid.

for students (when it's safe to do so):

• introducing yourself with pronunciation built in: "i'm Adaeze — ah-DAY-zay" is a complete sentence.
• phonetic spelling on any materials you hand in, if you want to.
• name cards, badges, and stickers that do the teaching for you.

for schools:

• make phonetic name fields standard in student information systems.
• include name pronunciation in teacher onboarding.
• take the cultural complexity seriously — this isn't a simple "just say it right" problem.

a classroom where every student hears their name said correctly isn't utopia. it's a minimum standard.

Mrs. Patterson managed it with a gradebook and a pencil. the rest of us have more tools available now.