Why Are Republicans Still Botching Kamala Harris’ Name?

Kamala Harris is not new to politics, nor the public scrutiny that comes with it. Harris is also certainly not new to attacks dripping in misogyny, racism and xenophobia. She has weathered it all throughout her career as California’s attorney general, the state’s senator and the vice president of the United States ― the whole time reminding the public of how to pronounce her Indian first name.

So, why are so many Republicans and right-wing talking heads still mispronouncing “Kamala,” even ― and especially ― after she recently took the president’s place in running against Donald Trump as the presumptive Democratic nominee?

“They are doing it on purpose,” Nicole Holliday, a sociolinguistics professor at the University of California, Berkeley, told HuffPost. “Some people are doing it on purpose. Some people are not exactly doing it on purpose, but they’re doing it because it’s what everyone around them does ― in particular, Trump has a cult of personality around him, and so what he says goes, and that’s how he’s pronouncing it.”

Harris has long clarified to the public that her name is to be pronounced “comma-la, like the punctuation mark.” During her 2016 run for Senate, Harris released a PSA about her name. Eight years and many corrections later, the politician’s name still takes up space ― her campaign’s first ad released Thursday shows crowds chanting “Kamala” using the candidate’s pronunciation.

(The Indian name Kamala, which in Sanskrit translates to “lotus,” is not traditionally pronounced “comma-la.” As detailed in Slate earlier this week, “com’la” is much closer to the original pronunciation, with no heavy emphasis on any of the syllables.)

About half of the speakers who mentioned the vice president by first name at the Republican National Convention earlier this month had mispronounced it, saying either “Kuh-MA-luh,” “Camel-uh” or “Camilla.” The CEO of Goya Foods even mocked her name as “Que-mala,” which means “how bad” in Spanish.

After President Joe Biden dropped out of the race for reelection and endorsed Harris to take his place, the public mispronunciations by the right only increased ― not only by politicians, but also by conservative media. Trump, notably, still mispronounces her first name, an almost certainly intentional decision given that the two are far from strangers to each other.

“Trump’s attacks to delegitimize people of color aren’t new ― he led the birther charge, right ― and what it shows you more than anything, is that Trump and his movement know that the vice president is a tested, proven leader,” a Harris spokesperson told HuffPost.

Holliday described the situation as a shibboleth, a linguistic term originating from the Bible that in English is defined as almost a slogan or catchword identifying someone with a community or ideology. The way a person decides to pronounce Harris’ first name can be an immediate identifier of their political alignment, she said.

“I live in California. If I say ‘pop’ when I go out and I run into another Midwesterner, immediately we have solidarity,” said Holliday, who is originally from Ohio. “So it goes the other way too. If you’re a Republican, or let’s say an independent but leaning Republican, and you say, ‘Kuh-MA-luh,’ then everybody knows … either you’re not really for her, or you’re not consuming the media where people bother to say her name, right?”

Referring to Harris only ever by her first name is already a trend rooted in misogyny, as EMILY’s List research reportedly finds that the long, evidence-based habit of calling female politicians by their first name leads to negative political consequences for them. Women in politics are not considered as serious as their male counterparts, most of whom get the benefit of being referred to by their surname.

But adding on much of the right’s likely intentional mispronunciation of Harris’ first name works to disrespect and disempower, painting a Californian woman descended from Indian and Jamaican immigrants as foreign, other, unamerican.

In speaking of the vice president’s last name, Holliday said that people in English-speaking communities tend to use their father’s last name. That, she said, became a disadvantage for former President Barack Obama, who faced racist attacks ― including from Trump, the architect of the birther conspiracy ― over his lineage and his patriotism because of his full name.

“The foreignness is her mother, which is less ‘scary’ than what it was with Obama, in particular because she’s a woman. So nobody can challenge her from the father’s side, even though he’s also an immigrant, he’s an Anglophone immigrant from a country that speaks English and English Creole, whereas her mother is the ‘scary brown one,’” Holliday said.

“Like, we understand Black people, even though the country hates Black people. But brown people are mysterious, right?” she continued. “And that’s what ties into her name. It’s just her first name, because that’s a ‘weird, mysterious’ one. Her last name is as American as apple pie as far as people know, even though it’s Jamaican.”

As Harris’ presidential campaign ramps up ahead of the November election, it is a guarantee that the vice president will face increased attacks from the right over her many identities, including her name. It’s “Comma-la,” as it has always been. And if Republicans wanted to pronounce it correctly so they can focus on the policies, they would.