My name is Sarp Gurakan. Actually, that’s a lie. My name is Sarp Gürakan, but I don’t know if the special character will show up on your computer. I’m afraid whatever text software you use may standardize the characters, or worse yet, you might just see a square with a question mark inside. Just to be safe, I will tell you what is going on. My name is Turkish, and the second letter of my last name is a special “U” — with two dots on top of each of its vertical arms.
When I first started using a computer as a kid, I was shocked to see that some letters didn’t exist in my keyboard. The “U” with two dots in my last name, technically called an “umlaut U”, was crassly transcribed as a boring old “U”. Sure, I could see that the keyboard had a limited amount of space, and it could not accommodate the innumerable array of characters that existed around the world. I could see the point of standardization, but I also felt that something was lost. My last name was not “Gurakan”; it was close enough, but it was not my real name. My grandfather had picked my family’s last name, and everyone in my family got to be a Gürakan. Everyone except my brother and I, both of whom moved to the United States.
There is not much of a point to my story, except that now I care less about the value of standardization. In my 7 years in the United States, the process of standardizing my identity for an American audience accelerated, until I shamefully obtained a Starbucks name (“Sam”) a few years ago. Don’t get me wrong — I love the United States; I love my laptop; I love Starbucks. That being said, I feel like I am at a point in my life where I can take a few steps back on the standardization and recover some of the un-standard parts of my identity.
So sometimes, maybe not always but sometimes, I am going to start typing my name right, as Sarp Gürakan. As an English-speaking audience, you may not be able to see it, or you might see a question mark inside a box. Even if you see it, you may not be able to pronounce it, so you may avoid saying my last name whenever you can. I understand all these things, but I don’t really mind. You know why? Because that’s not on me — Dots on U. (Get it? Like that’s on you?)
[My Microsoft mentor Shea Ahna wrote an article tangentially inspired by this one. Read if you please; I love this public correspondence! “This of course comes with costs (some measure of lost personhood) and benefits (ease and speed of communication) to consider.” - Thinking About “Starbucks Names”]
I do also share a last name with multiple ü’s in it. Though I did not necessarily experience cognitive dissonance you had faced with it, I appreciate that you are willing to exhibit your more authentic self rather than trying to manipulate to fit a certain understanding, especially when the audience may not necessarily understand why you might had want to self censor. Soooo kudos to you dude