Kamala Harrison doesn’t want to talk politics all the time, but with a name like that, politics follow the 47-year-old in Paulding County wherever she goes.
“I’d get ‘Oh, the VP is in the house’ or little jokes like that,” she said.
That kind of reaction is something she likely shares with the other 86 voters currently registered in Georgia with the first name Kamala.
Like Vice President Kamala Harris, Harrison pronounces her name “KAH-mah-lah” and endures constant mispronunciation to the point where she even considered switching to her middle name.
“I’ll get letters that aren’t even in there — Kamika, Camila, Carmela. It’s been everywhere,” she said. “I thought when she was running mate to (Joe) Biden that it would improve, and I feel like it’s gotten worse.”
That might be because Donald Trump, and other Republican politicians, have been mispronouncing Harris’ first name for years. Harrison thinks these mispronunciations are on purpose.
In 2020, Trump claimed that Harris did not know how to pronounce her own name correctly, and that she overreacted to seemingly purposeful mispronunciations, Forbes reported. Trump has continued that approach this campaign season.
“There’s about 19 different ways of saying it. She only likes three,” Trump said at a rally in Atlanta at the beginning of the month.
Trump took a similar tack against former Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley during the primary race in January, repeatedly mispronouncing Haley’s given first name, Nimarata. Haley, whose parents immigrated to the United States from India, told reporters at the time, “I’ll let people decide what he means by his attacks.”
Kamala Devi Valadares-Rimmey, a 65-year-old voter in Cobb County, shares a first name, middle name, sorority and mixed Black-Indian heritage with the vice president.
“There’s only one way to pronounce Kamala,” she said, referring to those who have Indian parentage like herself and the vice president.
(The Atlanta Journal-Constitution found multiple pronunciations among the Georgia Kamalas interviewed.)
Kamala Gourdine, 34, of Clayton County pronounces her name like Harris and faces constant mistakes. When meeting new people, sometimes Gourdine finds it easier to go by a nickname.
“I look at it like a respect factor,” she said. “Instead of just making the mistake over and over again, you can really just ask a person, how do they say their name?”
There are others who use a different pronunciation from the vice president but still receive attention.
Kamala Logan, 24, of DeKalb County works in customer service and says that people always bring up her name. She pronounces her own name “kah-MAH-lah.”
“I don’t think there’s ever a time that they don’t bring it up,” said Logan, who is of Jamaican and Indian descent like Harris. She finds it “petty” and “ignorant” that Trump claims not to care whether he pronounces Harris’ name correctly, though she says she doesn’t harbor animosity for the former president.
Kamala Hayward-Jordan, a 52-year-old battery technician in Mitchell County, pronounces her name “CAM-ah-lah” like the first syllable of “camera.” She said that Trump’s mispronunciation is making a mockery of her name.
“All my life, I never knew anyone that had the same name, and like her, people made fun of my name,” she said. “Right now, I’m just glad and happy to know that we got somebody up front to have the same name that I do.”
