If I were a business owner -- I don't want my employees answering a phone "Thank you for calling the the No-Name Hotel. I'm Ricardo Leon Sanchez de Reinaldo. How may I help you?"

I want "Thank you for calling the the No-Name Hotel. I'm Rick Sanchez. How may I help you?".

a) 75% of the callers are not going to remember the name in 30 seconds.

b) If they are calling -- they want to get their business done -- and have no other way to contact my people.

c) The faster my employee cna solve the customer's problem, the faster they can answer the next caller.

When in Rome, do as the Romans do.

Simple rule I think. If that is impossible for someone, then they should just not go to Rome.

That is the difference between a good visitor, and a bad visitor.

You think a Hispanic is hard try Asian names. Oh boohoo a Juan has to become John. Trying keep calling a Korean man Kim (a girls name) then finding out you have been calling him by his family name because they flip it around family name first, given name second. Never mind that it is not in roman script it is hangul or Kanji, or whatever.

Actually thinking about it. Try with East Indians. They tell me their name again and again but most time I really screw it up. Thank goodness most of them will give me a nickname or just shorten it. Most of them get over it.

I am going to sound totally un PC but I think there was something to be said for anglicizing immigrant's names. I think it helps with assimilation, and then when you meet someone you don't automatically know they are from France or Italy or Japan or Ghana or Mexico or whatever.

Went from Bruzgulis to Bruce, easier all around and proud to do it.

Ha! I love the way he wouldn't let it go, she was all "but Sanchez isn't anglicized!!!eleventy!", and he's all "My name is Ricardo Leon Sanchez de Reinaldo you stupid tool." Ok, he didn't say the part about her being a stupid tool, but it was implied, because those two reporterettes are tools.

And I have one of those long Spanish names too, AND my family is from New Mexico (have been there for close to 500 years) and I agree with Mr. Sanchez de Reinaldo, so Velez-Mitchell and Phillips can go to hell.

On topic and very funny, I thought everyone might enjoy this humorous take on the subject...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=va_khUXaJz4

"When in Rome, do as the Romans do."

Yes, but Hispanics have been in Taos longer than Anglos have.

I don't care if the hotel owner wants to make things easier on his potential guests (it sounds like a good idea) but those of you complaining on this thread about how hard it is to learn a name or two crack me up. You don't know that Kim (the Smith of Korea) is a surname? It's too much trouble to learn how to pronounce anything vaguely foreign? Seriously?

Since when do you use last names when answering at the switchboard. "Good Morning, Holiday Inn, Taos, how may I direct your call?" or "Good Morning, Holiday Inn, Taos, this is Maria, how may I direct your call?"

I worked in hotels for 10 years and we never had the front line staff use their last names. Name tags were first name only and staff could use an anglicized version of their name if they wanted to.

Astra, every other country in the world regards it as disrespectful for immigrants to refuse to adapt to the culture in their adopted country. For some reason, only the United States is held by the world community to have a requirement for the culture to adapt to the immigrant. When you consider all the different countries that immigrants to the U.S. come from, it's clearly an impossible task. Over time, America does absorb things from the cultures of its immigrants. A century ago, "Sanchez" would in fact be regarded as exotic, but today, it's almost as common as Smith. The U.S. is unique among all the world's cultures in doing this, but that doesn't mean we have to tolerate people who abuse the privilege.

Sounds like "Jane Valez-Mitchell" hasn't gotten over her parents giving her an Anglo name.

Every single one of my family members who immigrated here from Sicily in 1920 (and even Bavaria which was around the 1830's) used an Anglo version of their names when not in their home, or around their neighborhood (Little Italy in SF).

On their checks, mail, non-italian friends, school, work, etc. I never heard of one of them complain about it. One even shortened their last name to make it Anglo (that happened at Ellis Island, so not sure if it was done on purpose or accident - but they never changed it back).

At any rate, never heard any of them complain about it... ever. Totally dig this video.

(Those two harpies were making something out of nothing - and they were being so rude to that business owner in the process).

My favorite thing about the video is if you look at how they went to Rick for transition to another story, but he was all over it. He was angry. A little validation for me because when I heard those two going after that guy...so was I.

"Whitten recently fired some Hispanic employees who wouldn’t conform to his guidelines, which included not speaking Spanish in his presence"

And this too, I totally agree with.

Anyone who speaks more than one language worth their salt (one of those being the language of their adoptive country) would know it is extremely poor form and bad manners to speak your native language in ANY conversation with ANY company present who did not understand it - unless you are translating something for someone else.

This is a sign of disrespect, especially considering this guy was paying their paychecks.

Mrs D really gets annoyed with the constant " oh that's so cute" "how do you pronounce it?" "what does it mean?" It got so annoying that she had a name tag made up with "Jane." Who goes to a grocery store and annoys the workers?

People are easy to hate.

Remember the scene in "Men in Black" when Tommy Lee Jones introduces Will Smith to the two creatures -- or was it a two-headed creatures? -- at the big scanning console?

One was named "Bob," and the other had a name that was some nearly unpronounceable utterance of sounds and clicks. Something like that.

I don't have a point here. I just like, and am reminded of, that scene.

Dave has an interesting point. A friend who was considering becoming a Japanese citizen found that he had to adopt a Japanese name that could be written in Kanji & an Inken (sp?)...his western name in Katakana was not acceptable for citizenship - OK just to live there.

It can be hard to learn others names. In High school there was a guy and his name was "Thinh" which in trying to clone how he said it, we all said "Tin" instead. The quotes because that was his evaluation. I could not here a different between when he said "Tin" and "Thinh" and apparently neither could anyone else there.

My grandfather was a farmer and often hired Mexicans. He could only speak a little Spanish. Early in the day he would try to make a random comment - something like "The cattle up there on the hill are looking fat" - and this would reduce the Spanish chit-chat to almost none. Makes one wonder what they they were saying most the time.

"Jane Valez-Mitchell"

Is that her birth name or hypenated married name?

I grew up in a largely Mexican neighborhood near San Antonio, and I still have trouble with the pronunciation of certain names. The one that comes to mind at the moment is "Irene," pronounced "Eh-reh-nah," at least to my ear. Also, pointed out above, Martin as "Marteen," and David as "Da-veed."

I think the problem is that it throws people off. I'm calling your hotel to make a reservation, not get a lesson in hispanic culture. When I meet someone in a social setting, I learn how to say their name properly.

There is nothing more amusing than spouting off a little of ___ language when others are speaking it (rudely) in front of you. I purposely learn random phrases in a variety of languages for this very purpose.

DH is a language savant. He picked up a decent amount of tagalog from the filipino nurse our kids had in the NICU. He makes me ill :)If I could have one wish granted me in life, it would be to pick up languages effortlessly.

When heard on the phone, or seen written, no one gets my name right. So, when on the phone, I simply use the name it sounds like I have or, if they're needing my real name, I pronounce it phonetically. Makes life simple. I wold be fine with a boss asking me to use "Sarah" if I had a job on the phone.

I do rather like the spanish way of naming kids, that preserves the mother's name as well. But it does make for a long name.

"I also love the pronunciation in Spanish with the sort of lisp on the "c," as in "Barthelona."

That's Castilian Spanish. (The derivative of this found in Argentina - where my mother is from - which is a result of mingling Castillian Spanish with Italian is called Castellano). So the word Ella is pronounced exactly like the word Asia. Double "ll"'s will have a gggah type sound instead of a yah, like in the Mexican dialect.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castilian_Spanish.

> Is that her birth name or
> hypenated married name?

Sio sees the truth.

Hyphenated names are pain in the ass for everyone. I don't see what they accomplish for feminist principle: If what JVM calls "self-esteem" is so fragile that one mustn't have one's identity trounced with a husband's name, how is femininity not similarly abandoned under the use of a father's name? If a woman marries a lesbian, should they both use only their own mother's names? Or their great-great-great-grandmother's names?

Call yourself whatever you want. (I'll always admire a musical engineer named Smith who, at age of majority, renamed himself merely to harvest some giggles decades later.)

But understand that in the western world, these conventions are more about convenience than politics. If "self-esteem" comes from projecting your clumsy insecurities into the customer databases of enterprises that don't even like you very much, you're doing it wrong.

> So the word Ella is pronounced exactly
> like the word Asia.

But, like, which? Damn ferriners.

Anyone who speaks more than one language worth their salt (one of those being the language of their adoptive country) would know it is extremely poor form and bad manners to speak your native language in ANY conversation with ANY company present who did not understand it

I wouldn't go quite that far. I used to have a girlfriend who was an immigrant from Taiwan, as were her parents and siblings. They all spoke English, but when we'd have dinner with her family, the table conversation was in Chinese. If anyone was addressing me directly, they'd do so in English, or if my girlfriend thought I should know what had just been said, she'd translate. I didn't feel insulted at all; I'd have considered it rude of me to ask them to restrict themselves to English.

extremely poor form and bad manners to speak your native language in ANY conversation with ANY company present who did not understand it

we'd have dinner with her family, the table conversation was in Chinese

Context, of course. The family language at a family event is fair enough. If she's your girlfriend, and it's looking like a long-term relationship, you will eventually want to learn enough Chinese to participate.

However, in the context of the article, we have an English-speaking business serving English-speaking customers and a boss who's primary language is English. Prohibiting Spanish in the workplace is entirely reasonable.

I'd go a step farther: any society that expects to remain coherent must require immigrants to adapt to the local culture and speak the local language. I particularly object to voting documentation provided in Spanish - if you can't handle English, you shouldn't be voting. Heck, you shouldn't be a citizen.

Exactly, context. When we had people over who didn't speak Italian/Sicilian or Spanish we wouldn't converse in that language. I was always told that was rude. However, when it was a family gathering, that was a little different.

But outside our home, unless at another Spanish/Italian type gathering where they spoke it - it was verboten. My family had the same philosophy as Rick Sanchez on that..."We came to Am-eddie-gah....".

My grandmother has a thick (I mean think) accent but she always chooses to use English.

Just today we were at T.J.'s shopping and I still have to translate her English sometimes. (She asked the check-out clerk of "Trader's Joe" if she could have a "wine bug" (wine bag) for her bottles of wine). But this is the same woman when the DMV without asking for her preference of language on her drivers test and handed her one in Spanish - took it back to them and told them "I am American, I take it in English, thank you".

ESPN caused an uproar a few years ago when it started spelling the names of all baseball players who (in ESPN's opinion) had Hispanic-sounding surnames, using characters with all of the accent and diacritical marks. I forget who it was now, but there was one guy who was third-generation American that they did this to. He protested, but ESPN kept doing it anyway. This was when ESPN's baseball coverage started down the road from great to its current state of unwatchable.

Does anyone really feel uncomfortable if they call a hotel and the person on the other end says, "Hello, thank you for calling ____. My name is Ricardo. How can I help you?" ?

Really? Life must be full of self-imposed difficulties for such people...and I can't imagine they'd enjoy New Mexico too much anyway.

I guess I just can't imagine someone's name ever making me uncomfortable and what the issue is, if there really is one.

If someone's accent is so strong as to be hard to understand, is going by "Mary" instead of "Maria" really going to help? If someone speaks totally unaccented English but has a foreign name, do they have to use a different name? My BF's name is Jose (because his great-great-greats were Portuguese), but, he's a native English speaker. Would this guy want him to go by "Joe."

By all means, fire anyone who doesn't have the language skills to get the job done (or keep them off the phones). But I don't think changing names is necessary.

I currently live in Norway and am considering converting my surname to the Norwegian version. A lot of immigrants here do that on their own and they are also are required by law to take a minimum of 300 hours language and custom training. Not enough in my opinion! My son's name is a typical Norwegian name but not so hard to pronouce for my English speaking family. When my father moved to N. America from Germany, he took on the English version of his name. He's also a very big supporter of speaking the language and behaving like the citizens of your adopted country.

The other thing that needs to be mentioned is that, in America, long names are usually regarded as pretentious. Rick Sanchez gets this; to an American, "Ricardo Leon Sanchez de Reinaldo" is the Spanish equivalent of "Thurston J. Howell The Third".

We made sure that our children had at least one name that was easily pronounceable and spellable as English (American) in order to avoid potential problems. In America, the tendency is to shorten names in any case because of the cultural informality. For example, Rick for Ricardo or Richard, Ben for Benjamin, etc. It also reminds me of the British common law statement that a person is allowed to spell his name any way that he wants such as "Cholmondely pronounced Smith" (that is the punch line of a joke BTW).

I always like to say that 90% of language education is ear training.

To your 75-year-old prospective guest from somewhere back east (and with hearing that isn't too good these days under ideal conditions), launching into a politically-correct rolled-R pronunciation of a multisyllabic Hispanic name is going to sound over the telephone like the telephone central office just flipped the connection over to somebody else's call, and it's going to be bewildering. The brain doesn't adjust that quickly unless it's been taught to do so.

And the customer will adjust only if he feels like adjusting; otherwise, he'll find somebody else with which to do business. It is not the business' job to make the customers adjust. If the staff's attitude is "make the customer adjust to us", that's a quick way to go out of business.

"When in Rome, do as the Romans do."

Yes, but Hispanics have been in Taos longer than Anglos have.
Posted by: Astra

Yea, but they did murder and rape the natives. And susbsequently lost control of the area in a war - so fuck 'em

"Yea"

Damn skippy. They should have to Zuni-ize their names. And wear a badge that says "The Zuni and Hopi only let us stay around because we were so weak and harmless."

It comes down to something really simple. Barring anything illegal and dangerous, you do what the guy signing your paycheck tells you to do. Asking you not to speak Spanish in front of him and to please anglicize your names when you're on the phone with his customers is NOT dangerous or illegal.

And by the way, my mother, who grew up in New Mexico (as I mentioned before, my family is part of the so-called 14 "1st families" of Spanish there) tells me that she was taught that you did not speak a language in front of people that didn't understand it. So if you brought a friend home from school who did not speak Spanish, everyone spoke English. If old Tia Elena was visiting who didn't have great English language skills, then you spoke Spanish. If you had a mixed gathering, some who couldn't speak English, some who couldn't speak Spanish, then someone had to translate EVERY DAMNED WORD SO EVERYONE UNDERSTOOD.

This is not rocket science. The man's employees where looking for a fight. The disgusting part is that they are likely to win their stupid lawsuit.

Also, in customer service and hospitality? Yeah, you make the customer comfy. Really, it's not hard at all.

As a customer, when I phone any kind of support line and hear "Hi, my name is (unintelligible)", I immediately lose trust, as in my experience I've found it's usually a way of absolving the individual from giving good service. You can't report bad service from X if you don't know X's name. Conversely, if you are going to give good service, you will usually say your name slowly and intelligibly so people will hear it, so that they know who to compliment. The man's employees were not just looking for a fight, they were looking for an excuse to give poor service.