What’s in a name? Depends on who’s talking

NEW YORK (AP) — In the week since she was named as President Barack Obama’s nominee to the Supreme Court, Judge Sonia Sotomayor’s name has been on a lot of people’s lips.

But people have been saying it differently, touching off a culture-wars commotion in the process.

She pronounces her own name like this: soh-toh-my-YOR’ — accent on the final syllable. But plenty of TV news anchors have put the accent on the first syllable (SOH’-tuh-my-er), or come up with some other mangled variation.

Sotomayor describes herself as a Nuyorican, a term that generally refers to a New Yorker of Puerto Rican descent.

Mark Krikorian, an advocate of tougher immigration standards and a contributor to the conservative National Review, said putting the emphasis on the last syllable in Sotomayor’s name is an “unnatural pronunciation” in English.

In an online post, he said there “ought to be limits” to the inclination to defer to how people pronounce their own names.

Krikorian’s posting drew an angry response. Writing on Salon.com, Andrew Leonard said, “Personally, I feel that pronouncing someone’s name the way they would like it pronounced is a sign of courtesy and respect.”