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.