00:00I will say that with white people I definitely make it a point to make sure
00:04they know how to pronounce my name just because like it's not that difficult you
00:09know. When you're African there's so many positive stereotypes that come with
00:14your name versus like when you're black American. I don't use the rest of that
00:18because I do feel like it automatically says you're female and you're black. My
00:23name is Kalia Isabella Underwood. My full name is Nana Ama Sapoma Adjumai but my
00:28French just call me Nana. My name is Larissa Nicole Papillon. I am Creole and my
00:33last name means butterfly in French. Kalia means bridge between the sun and the
00:38moon in Swahili. Ama, the second part of my name, means Saturday. If you were if
00:43you're Ghanaian and you were born on a Saturday they call you Ama. I was named
00:48after my grandmother. I've always gone by like Rissa. I feel like it's a more racially
00:55ambiguous name. My father hasn't even gone to the point where he's like don't go
00:58by Larissa at all. Go by Nicole. You'll sound very white. You'll sound very like a
01:03upstanding citizen. If you go by Nicole Papillon no one can place you. When I was
01:06younger it was tough because people didn't know how to pronounce it or
01:10people would make fun of it. I had a co-worker who called me Kalia for almost
01:15six months. When I was down to Ama people be like where are you from? Ew! Like so I was
01:20always judged and I hated that. I really really hated that. Kale, Kahaley, Kayla,
01:28Kalayla, Kahula. Although my name is Nanama all my friends really just call me
01:33Nana and people still can't get that right so they call me Nana. I don't get
01:38why I'm like it's Nana it's pretty simple and then they all once they find
01:41out it's Nana they're like oh Nana Nana. Thanks you ruined my whole name.
01:45Appreciate it. Kiki, do you love me? When people pronounce my name wrong it's
01:52actually understandable. I just nicely correct them like hey it's Nana Ama. I
01:57just think that it's common courtesy to pronounce a name the way it's supposed to
02:01be pronounced. My name has been pretty beneficial in the workplace. People are
02:05like oh she's ethnic you know like we want her here we want an African woman here
02:09versus like if my name was something else that a lot of people might target or
02:14correlate with being ghetto they might not even want to review my application.
02:18Honestly they don't even know if I'm a male or female sometimes. When I was
02:21looking for like fast food jobs or retail jobs I just had the fear that you know my
02:26application would kind of be put to the side because my name is so ethnic. So I
02:30think that I'm fortunate because you know I'm in a creative industry. My dad up
02:35until this day has a grudge against why I only go by Nana like on all of my
02:42bylines. He's like that's not your name. I'm like it is my name. So we still have
02:46this like constant back and forth between like I need to go by Nana Ama or I need to
02:51go by Nana. And now that I'm growing up I kind of see his side to the story. I kind
02:56of
02:56do think that it's respectful of my culture and of my family to go by my whole
03:01first name. I think my name is definitely black sounding and that's why I love it.
03:06like it's part of my culture. I love my name now. I love that I am Nana Ama Sapo Ma
03:11Ashmore.
