#20 Changing Their Name

John Shajari, Kelli Nia, Kevin Hosseni, Cindy Vady, Michael Tabatabai. If you have ever heard these names from an Iranian when they introduce themselves to you, be one hundred percent certain that he/she was not born with that name. Iranians seem to be changing their names in large numbers. It might be because of a various number of reasons that they are changing their name, including but not limited to, wanting to get into the rap game so they need a cool rap name (hey that rhymed), protesting their slave names, being part of a government organization and need to avoid detection, or their names are too hard to pronounce and they are embarrassed when the barista at Starbucks says it incorrectly. More than likely the last reason is the real reason why they are changing their names and all the other ones are the case in only 0.0001% of the cases. It should be noted that these aren’t legal name changes, but just when they want to get their soy mocha latte and they don’t want the high school drop-out who is making their drink to call their name out loud (Shar…Shar-ham, Shar-heem or whatever, soy latte).

The only time that Iranians don’t change their names are under three circumstances. (1) When they already have Western sounding names such as Sara, Maryam, Melody, or Ariana, (2) when they shorten their first name into something more acceptable such as Ashkan becoming Ash (Pokemon!) and Mohammad becomes Moe, or (3) when they accept an incorrect pronunciation of their name because its easier to pronounce such as Shahram becomes Shay-ram or Shay-rem, Idean becomes I-den or E-dine, and Navid becomes Ne-veed or Nay-vid.

For those of you wondering, the picture above is of Sara Shahi and she is the picture of this blog because not only does she have a westernized sounding name already and doesn’t need to change her name, but she is one of the most attractive Iranian of all Iranians. Sorry other Iranians.