Shakespeare's famous line “A rose by any other name would smell as sweet” from Romeo and Juliet addresses whether the essence of an entity should be judged by the label we give it.
My father was a proud immigrant from India in 1970, with my mom and brother following a year later. As for me, I appeared slightly more than nine months after that.
When people arrive in a nation of immigrants like ours, often with children not far behind, they have a decision to make about names: Should they choose an English name? An easy-to-pronounce (for Americans) non-Anglo name? Or follow past familial or cultural traditions? Whatever the approach, research shows that names matter in terms of opportunities, judgements, and drawing attention.
By some tradition unknown to me, it was my father's oldest sister who gave me my name. As a kid, my parents spoke with a thick accent, occasionally generating conflict or ridicule. No one really knew how to say my name and my parents didn’t make it any easier. Early on in school, I settled on the following: "A-new-rug" — just like something you might say after the installation of a recently purchased carpet. As a matter of convenience, this made introducing myself to other kids easier.
It wasn't until high school, when I visited my older brother at college, that things changed. He introduced me to his friends as "on-oo-rog", a pronunciation I hadn’t heard before, and I pretty much immediately adopted it. It felt truer to my parent's Hindi, and less… carpet-inspired.
Later, as a graduate student, I was excited to see my name in print. I remember looking myself up on what was then called "Current Contents," a proto web-based search engine for academic articles. At least 100 articles appeared by "A. Agrawal". How could a name so obscure be so common? In hopes of standing out, I went on the hunt for a middle initial that might make me more unique in the world of biology and environmental science — and ever since, I’ve published with a fictitious middle initial.
During my job interview at the University of Toronto, I didn’t have it in me to constantly correct people on the pronunciation of my name. Frankly, I wasn't sure I was saying it right. But when I started the job, hearing people struggle to say my name, it seemed clear to me that something had to change. I put up a pronunciation key on my office door: "on" like a light switch, "oo" like spoon and "rog" like log. More than once, I arrived to find my colleagues mouthing the sounds of my name in front of my door. We never really talked about it — but it was the least painful way to make that adjustment for all of us.
Shockingly enough, the University of Toronto had no less than two other professors who were A. Agrawals. There are several English spellings of अग्रवाल — “Agarwal” being the most common, and the other two variants with two g's. One of the two other Toronto A. Agrawal professors was also an evolutionary biologist! Over the years, many journal editors have mixed us up, sending requests, rejection letters and award notifications to the wrong A. Agrawal. In an effort to reduce such confusion, we all agreed it was for the best that I moved from Toronto to Ithaca in 2004.
Cornell has been my personal and intellectual playground for the last two decades. Our byzantine NetID email system, initials followed by numbers, brings a chaos of its own — it shouldn't be surprising that senders sometimes get the wrong receivers. (I am aa337 in case you were wondering). It was early on, probably around 2005, when a frustrated graduate student asked me, sheepishly, if I was available; they had sent me some messages and I apparently hadn't replied. It took a few more incidents like this to realize that I had a Cornell namesake: aa297, their full name spelled exactly the same as mine. We aren't really in contact, but he graciously forwards most emails that come to him from my students, colleagues, and journal editors. I suppose it's all fine, we all get too many emails anyway.
The point is, how we see ourselves through our name — and how others see us through the same, can be complicated. Names reflect our confidence, biases, comfort and ideas about society. A soul by any other name is still itself, and the given name, that initial sound, should not be of such significance. Or, perhaps, it’s a lot less complicated, and it’s simply a name. At the end of the day it’s your name, so you decide how you're seen.
Regardless, just call me Prof. A.
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Anurag Agrawal is the James A. Perkins Professor of Environmental Studies in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. He is field biologist and studies the Ecology and Evolution of Botany and Entomology. His column Candor and Chlorophyll runs periodically this semester. He can be reached at profaagrawal@cornellsun.com.
