I did not go to my university commencement, because of the inconvenience it would have been to the few people I would invite to such an event, and I graduated with my bachelor degree at age 51. My goal was to complete college and be the only woman in my family to do so (mother, grandparents and greats never did). My high school guidance counselor discouraged me from attending college. I did it anyway. The slow way. One course at a time. No dorms or college life. I went to work and did my studies part-time. The ceremony was broadcast online, so I watched from the office cafeteria during lunch.
When I read about the commencement this past week in which Thomas Jefferson University students were subjected to botched pronunciations of their names as they picked up their diplomas, my first thought was that the education system had finally revealed its flaws in 2024. The person reading the names was given cue cards with phonetics printed on them. Unfortunately the phonetics may have been from a British English translation.
I recall the late actor Christopher Lee, whose education was at the hands of the British upper-class system, manned with the most brutal faculty imaginable. His pronunciation of Maria Theresa was met with some violence (with a ruler) and the retort that the correct way was to say* “Marya Tereezer!” and a note that, “You’re English, boy, and don’t you forget it!” His background, by the way, was also Italian.
The mangled name of Jefferson graduate Sarah Virginia Brennan, for example, was translated as “sair-uh-vuh-jin-ee-yuh-breh-nuhn” using such an online aid. We would likely say just “sa-rah-vir-jin-yah.” This would explain why the cue cards were less than useless. As the speaker said, she should have simply read from her book. Apparently she does know how to pronounce “Thomas” and “Elizabeth.”
I am providing a link to a well-explained YouTube video which makes the point on behalf of the poor speaker (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HFNddvwLJEo.
When we need to depend on such easily faulty guides to read people’s names, we’re truly in a language cesspool and doomed to become a non-verbal generation. If a student were named Daquan, that could be “dah-kwan” or “day-kwan.” Then, you need a cue card. Virginia and Thomas should be no-brainers for those of us with a brain to receive a college degree.
In my career I’ve managed the landmines of such names with multiple syllables and trippy diphthongs, which I’m lucky to be able to navigate naturally without much trouble. For colleges with soup pots of multinational students, the ability to muddle through names will be a struggle for a time, until we become familiar with some of the subtleties of pronunciation in other countries (including the finer points of British English).
The speaker should not be the one to blame. Naming starts with parents. Pronunciation starts in the classroom, and it ends when that role up yonder is read by Saint Peter at the gate.
Congratulations, graduates. As long as it’s spelled right on the diploma, you’re good to go!
*Being one to double-check my sources rather than rely on memory, I got home and looked inside Christopher Lee’s autobiography and updated this excerpt, but the podcast will retain the original text.