What's In a Name?

Oh, boy:

A U.S. college professor has been placed on administrative leave after he allegedly asked a Vietnamese student to anglicize her name because it sounded “offensive” in English.

Phuc Bui Diem Nguyen, a Vietnamese-American student at Laney College, based in Oakland, Calif., told ABC7 News KGO that on her second day of class she received an email from her trigonometry professor, Matthew Hubbard, asking that she “anglicize” her name.

“Phuc Bui sounds like an insult in English,” Hubbard wrote, according to screenshots of the email shared on social media. Having never heard the term “anglicize” before, Nguyen told KGO that she asked a friend what it meant. Nguyen added that she was used to people finding her name difficult to pronounce but “they would ask (her) how to pronounce (her) name.”

Where does one start?

I can understand both the professor's and the student's concerns (her name is pronounced 'fook', by the way). The professor must find it very uncomfortable to repeat something that sounds scandalous in his native English but it's not like he could not discreetly clarify the correct pronunciation of his student's name or (if it did come to that) gently suggest another title. Then again, why should an adult change her name because her professor did not do his due diligence in clarifying the correct pronunciation of her name or even accept that not everyone wishes to adopt an English-sounding name (though many have to avoid the sort of confrontation this student and her grammar-deficient sister have gotten themselves into)?

Would it have been so bad if both the professor and the student not escalate this into a battle of rudeness and even career-ending action, a refuge for culturally indignant?

And who takes this stuff to social media, anyway? Are you that desperate for attention and letting everyone know how poor your grammar is?

It sounds like both parties wanted to make mountains out of molehills.

Mission accomplished.