by Sonny Nguyen

My name is Sonny. If you are reading this, in English, from almost any country in the world, you probably know that name. Maybe you don’t know me, maybe you don’t know anyone in real life by that name, but you know that Sonny is a name. You know how to read it, you know how to pronounce it, you can even probably spell it a few different ways.

My name is Sonny.

So please, someone out there in the vast collective genius that is the internet, please explain to me why a white person saw my name tag the other day and asked me how to pronounce it.

I get this question often enough that I shouldn’t have been as confused as I was. She watched me raise an eyebrow and look around for an exit. “Is it pronounced like Sony?” she asked, pronouncing it like the Playstation company.

“No…” I hesitated. I had already been written up a few times for sassing customers. They always started it, though. I promise.

“So, it’s Sonny.” She seemed a little disappointed.

“Yes, just like every other time you’ve seen these letters in this particular arrangement.”

An awkward pause.

“Oh.” She didn’t look offended, just confused. “Is that your –” She put her hands up in front of her and pushed them from her stomach towards me as she arched her back. For a second, I thought she had given up on English communication and moved into interpretive dance. “Like, is that your name from when you were, you know, born?”

Oh. She was birthing. That weird body thing was her birthing me. Wait, did she think I didn’t know what the word bornwould mean if she hadn’t done that? Did she think I didn’t know English?

“Yes. I… I have to go.”

This happens a lot. The name thing. The interpretive dance-communication thing happens a lot too, but not as much as the name thing. So let’s get this settled. Sonny is pronounced like Sonny. It is not pronounced Sony, Sawn-yuh, Sawnee or Sone-yee. It’s actually really easy. Sonny.

So why do white people constantly try to do the most with my name? Well, basically, it’s because the melanocytes in the basal layer of my epidermis are much more active than theirs. Even more basically, it’s because I’m brown.

(continued below)