One of my favourite sketches from Goodness Gracious Me features a white Englishman named Jonathan going to work for an Indian company. His new employers, unable or unwilling to pronounce his “complicated name”, say that he may be seen as a troublemaker unless he adopts something more conventional. Eventually, the newly dubbed Joginderpal Shivarama Gurupati Murthy is welcomed into the company with open arms.

A survey of 1,000 people by the law firm Slater and Gordon has found that a third of employees from minority ethnic backgrounds have been asked to change their name to something more “English”, with the majority of those polled worrying that their careers would suffer if they refused.

Older family members and parents of friends often went by anglicised names at work. Mayur became Mike; Panagiotis became Peter; Maciej became Magic (which, let’s be honest, is an absolutely banging nickname. If anyone wants to call me Magic Shah then fill your boots).

Of course, whether people experience any sort of “loss of identity” as a result of this varies. My sister has gone by an anglicised nickname since she was 11, uses this name professionally and doesn’t feel any less “herself” as a result of it.

However, this survey does indicate that there is still an unnecessary expectation for people to change in order to accommodate their surroundings, purely because their surroundings can’t be bothered to make an effort. I refuse to believe that my two words – three syllables, eight letters – are too complex for people who can read and immediately know how to pronounce a name like Stephen Murphy-Holmes.

My dad once told me a story about working with a white man called Kenneth. When Kenneth asked if he could call my dad Victor, my father responded: “That depends. Can I call you Kanubhai?” They remained Vikram and Kenneth.

At the turn of the 20th century, a boy who everyone called “Joe” studied at Harrow School and Trinity College, Cambridge. His patriotic fervour and desire for independence already burgeoning, he would eventually spearhead the most spectacular example of political nation-building in modern history – an independent India – oftentimes from the confines of a prison cell. The history books don’t call him Joe. They call him Jawaharlal. It is your name. Insist on it.