The latest in the “foot in mouth” chronicles starring  Texas Rep Betty Brown:

Rep. Betty Brown suggested that Asian Americans might want to adopt names that are “easier for Americans to deal with” when they want to vote so their names will match what is on registration rolls (link: via angryasianman.com)

To be fair, the hon. representative was definitely *not* addressing Indian names because as every school kid in America knows – Indians are not Asian ! ( ASIDE: This was one of the biggest culture shocks for me when I moved to the USA. All my life I thought of myself as Asian, until I moved to California where I suddenly metamorphosed into an unknown entity “The South Asian”. No-one – media, politicians wants to acknowledge us as “Asian”.Is it because we look different?Isn’t that kind of racist too?)

Of course if Betty Brown had met my friend Venkata Ramanan Shivaramakrishnan Ganapathy Subramanian- she may have changed her mind and been more …er…”inclusive” in her sweeping condemnation of ethnic names!
To quote the rep ( watch the video in the link for more gems!)

Rather than everyone here having to learn Chinese – I understand it’s a rather difficult language – do you think that it would be to you and your citizens to adopt a name that we could deal with more readily here?

I don’t make this stuff up – I just report it!

As always, when I am a loss for words , I turn to “Catch-22”

“Yossarian? What the hell kind of a name is Yossarian” “It’s Yossarian’s name sir”

AND

“Yossairan….an odious, alien, distasteful name, that just did not inspire confidence.” It was “…not at all like such clean, crisp, honest, American names as Cathcart, Peckem and Dreedle.”

As part of Uberdesi’s eternal quest to make life easier in the USA for our devoted readers, here is a link to widget that will generate a nice, pronouncable, American name for you. This comes to you courtesy of another Texas Rep Trey Martinez who at least proves that not all reps are racist, unthinking jerks!

I tried it and my Betty Brown Approved Name is LaVerne “Lunchables” Brown.
Take Betty Brown Name Generator today!
Created with Rum and Monkey’s Name Generator Generator.

Just call me “Lunchables”!

(* “A rose by any other name would smell as sweet”- William Shakespeare)

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