MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:

Vice President Harris says her first name like this – Kamala. Here she is describing the pronunciation in 2017 in the podcast “Axe Files.”

(SOUNDBITE OF PODCAST, “THE AXE FILES”)

VICE PRESIDENT KAMALA HARRIS: There are many ways. If you were asking my grandmother, she’d say Kamala (laughter). I usually help people pronounce it by saying, well, just think of a hyphen, a comma, and then I had a la at the end, and that’s it, Kamala.

KELLY: But as Harris has ascended politically, her name is getting more airtime – and with it, more criticism from political opponents. NPR White House correspondent Deepa Shivaram has the story.

DEEPA SHIVARAM, BYLINE: Before Kamala Harris was on the national stage, Kamala Kanneganti (ph) was growing up in Michigan, and the only famous Kamala she had ever heard of was from a 1992 episode of “Star Trek.”

(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, “STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION”)

TIM O’CONNOR: (As Ambassador Briam) Kamala, remain in your room. I will speak with you shortly.

SHIVARAM: Kanneganti used to sometimes go by nicknames, like Kammy or KK, instead of saying Kamala. Now, though, when she introduces herself, she gets a different reaction.

KAMALA KANNEGANTI: If I need to put my name down on order or something, they’ll be like, oh, I know that name.

SHIVARAM: As the vice president’s name has become more known in politics, it’s coincided with the name Kamala appearing more in entertainment. In the show “Ms. Marvel,” there’s Kamala Khan. And in Mindy Kaling’s show “Never Have I Ever,” actress Richa Moorjani plays a character named Kamala. In one scene, her boss is introducing her at a new job and mispronounces her name. Moorjani recounts it this way.

RICHA MOORJANI: So he says to everybody, everybody, meet Kamala. And my character says, actually, it’s Kamala, and he’s like, got it – Kamala.

SHIVARAM: Moorjani says she pronounced her character’s name as Kamala, how the name is traditionally said, because her character had just immigrated to the U.S. But she says it would make sense for others to say their names differently, depending on where they’re from, something she did in the show “Fargo.”

MOORJANI: I made a conscious decision that my character would actually pronounce her name as Indira, which is how everybody in the show pronounces it because she’s from a small town in Minnesota and has a Minnesotan accent, and it just didn’t really make any sense for her to be like, oh, hi, I’m from Minnesota. My name is Indira.

SHIVARAM: Fictional or not, Moorjani says how people choose to say their own name is personal and should be respected. But on the campaign trail, Harris’ name has been mispronounced intentionally by her opponent.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

DONALD TRUMP: They were explaining to me, you can say Kamala. You can say Kamala. I said, don’t worry about it. Doesn’t matter what I say. I couldn’t care less if I mispronounce it or not. I couldn’t care less.

SHIVARAM: That was former President Trump at a rally in July. He and other Republicans have been mocking Harris’ name since 2020. By singling out her name, it’s a way to other her, says Myles Durkee, a professor of psychology at the University of Michigan.

MYLES DURKEE: When you intentionally mispronounce someone’s name who’s less traditional in an American context, it’s almost a dog whistle towards othering that person, trying to suggest as if they’re less American, they’re less – almost less worthy of you saying their name correctly in the first place.

SHIVARAM: Durkee says there’s probably a lot of people in the U.S. who hadn’t heard the name Kamala before. So people inadvertently might pronounce it Kamala instead of Kamala. But Trump repeatedly saying Kamala wrong is a different story. Durkee says it’s a microaggression, and it’s something conservatives did with former President Obama’s name, too.

Harris herself, though, hasn’t really responded to Trump’s rhetoric about her name, nor has she to any of the attacks from Trump on her biracial identity. But Harris’ husband, second gentleman Doug Emhoff, has. He told a crowd at a recent event that if Trump is having trouble saying Harris’ first name, he has a solution.

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DOUG EMHOFF: But here’s the good news. After the election, you can just call her Madam President.

SHIVARAM: Deepa Shivaram, NPR News.

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