In each installment of Aaira’s Adventures, Aaira Goswami ’27 captures the fleeting emotions and quiet reflections of life at Stanford, exploring moments of growth and discovery. From joyous experiences as an international student to unraveling the unexpected, join her journey of learning more about life here.
“Hey Aria, hope you are doing well!”
“Hello Aira, thanks for reaching out!”
“What’s up Ayra?”
“Hi Bryan, thank you for your response!”
To the algorithms, I am a typo. To a rushed TA, I am an enigmatic arrangement of vowels (Ayra). And occasionally, in moments of peak mid-quarter exhaustion, I am a completely different human being named Bryan.
More often than not, I get responses where people have misspelled my name. It happens in high-stakes job interviews, casual emails from friends, logistics threads for campus clubs and introductions from friends of friends.
For the longest time, my policy was simple: shrug it off. Don’t think too much about it. Don’t cause a scene.
Here is how the internal routine usually goes. I look at the text, I let out a little sigh and I type my response without correcting them. Sometimes, if I am already having a rough day, the routine involves a tiny, private squeal directed at my laptop screen: “The correct spelling is literally right there in my email address!” But then, I move on anyway.
During my sophomore year of college, I started a running joke on my Instagram story, posting every time a barista misspelled my name. Once, I had someone give me my coffee order with my name spelled as “AIR.” Soon, I was posting every time I purchased coffee. All my life, I have just been ignoring if someone gets my name wrong. I mean after all, what am I supposed to do?
One day, after a brutal week of assignments and presentations, my friend and I headed to the campus Starbucks for a much-needed break. I said, “Get ready! I will have to take a picture again once I get this order, because even though I spell it out for them, I am sure they will write my name down incorrectly.”
My friend glanced at the cashier, looked back at me, and said, “I don’t think so.” It caught me off guard. I was left a bit confused as to why he assumed he understood my daily experiences and struggles better than I did.
“Why?” I asked, making no effort to hide my judgment. Fortunately, we were close enough friends that he knew my side-eye did not mean I actually hated him.
“Well, look at her!”
I saw the cashier wearing a badge with her name spelled out. It was a rather hard spelling that I would have gotten wrong if I had not known it before.
“Her name is unique. Just like yours. I bet people have a hard time spelling her name, so she will try her best to ensure your name is spelled correctly. Wouldn’t you?”
That was something that I had always thought of, but never put together like that. I was really glad he did.
For the first time in forever, I received my coffee with my name spelled correctly.
It made me reflect on my name a lot more. It was a name that I often got compliments for, but I personally struggled with actually admiring it. It was especially hard when people couldn’t say it. In one of my classes, my professor had a different pronunciation for my name every other day. It was slightly disrespectful but I had convinced myself it was too late to correct her.
However, in hindsight, my name has been a major asset, always helping me stand out effortlessly. On the first day of class when I sat down and placed my name card, my professor looked at my name card and said, “that’s surely a lot of vowels.” I laughed and realized that he was never going to forget my name. I have started to embrace my unique name and feel much more proud of it now.