Names/Nombres

“Names/Nombres” is a personal essay about the author’s experience growing up in the United States after emigrating from the Dominican Republic with her family. Narrated in the first person, it employs a number of anecdotes from Alvarez’s childhood that illustrate how her identity and sense of self shifted upon arriving in the United States. However, Alvarez also describes how her various family members adapted to life in the United States, revealing the different ways individuals cope with and adapt to cultural shifts, even within the same family.

Central to the essay is the issue of naming and The Power Dynamics of Pronunciation. From the moment they encounter a customs officer after arriving in the United States, Alvarez and her family find their names mispronounced, abbreviated, or changed completely to better suit English pronunciation. The individuals mispronouncing their names, like the customs officer, their apartment super, and Alvarez’s teachers, are often members of the dominant culture and ethnicity; they hold a position of power over Alvarez and her family, and their mispronunciation of their Spanish names connotes refusal to respect their culture and identity and insistence that they need to change something about themselves to fit in with American society.