Universal Design for Belonging: Living and Working with Diverse Personal Names

There is great diversity in the names and naming practices of Canada’s population due to the multiple languages and cultures from which names and name-givers originate. While this diversity means that everyone encounters unfamiliar names, institutional agents who work with the public are continually challenged when attempting to determine a name’s correct pronunciation, spelling, structure and gender. Drawing from over a hundred interviews in London (Ontario) and Montréal (Québec), as well as other published accounts, I outline strategies used by institutional agents to manage name diversity within the constraints of their work tasks. I explain how concern with saving face and being polite can involve microaggressions which contribute to exclusion and disadvantage for people with certain kinds of names. Repeated mistreatment of names, whether intentional or not, negatively affects the integration of immigrants and their sense of belonging in the new society. I argue that the respectful treatment of names is a small but meaningful step toward making multilingual and multi-ethnic societies more welcoming and inclusive. Informed by the principles of Universal Design for Learning, I offer a set of recommendations for normalizing name diversity in work and social life. Il est possible de constater une grande diversité de noms et de pratiques de dénomination au sein de la population canadienne ceci en raison des nombreuses langues et cultures d'où proviennent ces noms et ceux qui les donnent. Alors que cette diversité a pour effet que chaque personne aura éventuellement à faire face à des noms peu familiers, on note en particulier que les agents institutionnels, qui travaillent avec le public, sont constamment mis à l’épreuve lorsqu'ils tentent de déterminer la prononciation, l'orthographe, la structure et le genre corrects d'un nom. En se fondant sur plus d'une centaine d'entrevues réalisées à London (en Ontario) et à Montréal (au Québec), ainsi que sur des comptes rendus ayant fait l’objet de publications, nous ...