What’s in a (difficult, Jewish) name? 

The name I use for ordering coffee is Ilana.

Ilana is actually my mother’s name, but it is also conveniently easy to pronounce, spell, and doesn’t come with 20 questions about my background, or a request for an alternate nickname that fits on the coffee cup.  

Some time ago, I was standing at the counter of one of those trendy cafes in Fitzroy, giggling with a friend about our fake coffee order names, when the barista looked at us puzzled. He asked us if the names we provided weren’t actually our names. My friend and I exchanged glances, before explaining that we both have names that are difficult to spell and pronounce, so we use different names at the checkout to make things easier.

The barista laughed and said that he used to do the same thing. He told us his very Christian, African mother named him Josiah, which for some reason, was too abstract for his inner-city white friends to grasp, so they all just called him Joe. When his mother discovered his nickname, she smacked him on the back of his head and said, “I didn’t name you Josiah so you would go around calling yourself Joe!” 

He left us with a note on our coffees to stop making our names more tolerable for others and gave us a free (sympathetic) donut. 

I know that Josiah and I are not alone in the coffee name conundrum. To write this article, I put out a call on my Instagram, asking my friends with ethnic names if they use an alias to order their coffee. The responses I received were overwhelmingly affirming.

Michal uses Isabella. Avital uses Abby. Wan uses Lee. Zev uses Zack. Mussie uses Rose. Two Yaron’s go by Aaron and Yaz. Seemran uses Sim. Pessy uses Emma. Shimi uses Daniel because “you can never go wrong with Daniel”, and Yehuda uses “any random name that is easy to spell”. The list goes on.  

Since my Instagram algorithm is definitely spying on my search history, I was recently fed a video from user @aminathree begging white people to “stop trying to force your stupid nicknames onto people with ethnic names!”. Her name is Aminatou and claims that a name is “literally your introduction to the world”, and that she “will stand there and help you pronounce [her] name until you get it right”. 

The comments on the video were mostly full of other users applauding Aminatou’s opinion, and how they are also sick and tired of adjusting their names for the ease of others. To quote actress Uzo Aduba, “If they can learn to say Tchaikovsky, Michelangelo and Dostoevsky, they can learn to say Uzoamaka”.  

So why is it that I am inclined to agree with Aminatou, Josiah and Uzoamaka, but still find discomfort when extending this notion to my own, Jewish, name?  

I have always been unhappy with my name. Being called something like Samantha or Ashley always seemed preferable; easy, white, and nickname-able. I disliked how my name was so closely linked with my identity as a Jew, and made me so easily identifiable. Granted my name is still fairly uncommon in the Jewish world (although it’s gaining traction!), and as someone who grew up amongst hordes of Chayas, Nechamas and Menachem Mendels, my name is not the most obvious cultural match.  

Why am I so concerned with being deemed acceptable? My immediate thought is that it may have developed from a place of fear. I have always been asked to explain the significance of my name to new people, but it was after leaving my cultural bubble to attend university that I started being confronted with hostility during introductions.

Initially, I told people I was Jewish, and my name was of Hebrew origin. Unfortunately, that also came with a shift in the questions posed, and I was often immediately quizzed on my opinion on the Israel/Palestine conflict, including if I was comfortable with my “family murdering an entire people”.  

After that I decided to start telling people that my parents were hippies in the 90s and I was born in an Ashram in India, and the Swamis there named me Odeya, which means ‘Lover of Light and Peace’. For some reason this bogus backstory was far easier for the free thinkers at university to digest than simply being Jewish.  

I have no doubt that many of my friends who hide their names from the public also share similar concerns. Having a non-Western name in a Western society comes with clear disadvantages. A 2023 study from Monash University confirmed that job applicants with ethnic names received significantly fewer callbacks than applicants with white-sounding names, despite submitting identical resumes.  

Contrastingly, a different study by Zhao & Biernat in 2018, which examined Chinese students adopting Anglo names, found those who used a second – white – name had lower self-esteem as a result of experiencing identity loss. This is not only true for people with ethnic names living in English-speaking countries, as examined in one particular study that found American students who changed their names while living in Denmark also experienced low self-esteem.

If you choose to use your ethnic name in a public sphere, you open yourself up to discrimination and other unpleasantries. If you choose not to, and instead use a coffee order name as a protective mechanism, you can experience identity loss, cultural abandonment, and decreased social and emotional wellbeing. You’re damned if you do, and damned if you don’t.

Personally, after finding myself stuck between a rock and a hard name, I have decided to opt for the former. Why should I go about my life trying to make myself more palatable for others? As loathe as I am to admit it, every time I adjust my identity for someone else, I erase my cultural heritage.

The assumption of predicted discrimination not only denies the benefit of the doubt to the barista (who probably doesn’t really care), but also further solidifies my insecurity. Maybe I’ll still use ‘Ilana’, depending on how I’m feeling that day. Sometimes it’s easier to have a near-wordless exchange at a café without the complicated explanation. But in a world already filled with Ashleys and Samanthas, I fully endorse the radical notion of using your true ethnic name.

My name is my identity, and I sincerely hope I can make many more people uncomfortable in the future.