The Name We Discard: How Indian Immigrants Adapt in the US
Rajesh becomes Ray. Priya becomes Pree. Arun becomes “Aron” because, well, it’s easier. These aren’t just spelling variations — they’re microcosms of a larger asymmetry in how immigrant identity works in America
Walk into any American tech office, startup, or corporate floor. You’ll find Indians with anglicized names filling their professional lives while keeping their “real” names for family WhatsApp groups. The pattern is so routine it feels natural, almost inevitable. Yet the opposite rarely happens: when Americans move to India or anywhere else in Asia, they rarely feel compelled to change their names. This asymmetry reveals something uncomfortable about how power, discrimination, and assimilation work.
The Numbers Don’t Lie: How Common Are These Changes?
The practice is widespread but often invisible because it happens gradually. My older brother, Nirmalkumar, became Norm. My sister, Savita, became Sammy. These aren’t dramatic rebrandings — they’re accommodations, convenience, survival tactics in a system not built for them.
The examples are endless and mundane:
- Shrinivasan → Shri or Steve
- Priya → Pree or even just “P”
- Deepak → Dave
- Anjali → AJ
- Vikram → Vik or Victor
Some Indians officially change their names on resumes, LinkedIn, and job applications. Others switch between contexts — their legal name in one setting, an anglicized version in another. This code-switching becomes second nature, so normalized that it barely registers as a choice anymore
Why This Happens: The Machinery of Discrimination
The reasons are deceptively simple but rooted in real harm:
1. Hiring Bias Is Measurable
Harvard research demonstrated that resumes with Indian names receive callback rates 26–50% lower than identical resumes with “white-sounding” names. This isn’t anecdotal — it’s statistical. When a hiring manager sees “Priya Gupta” versus “Priya Gardner,” the outcomes differ meaningfully. Discrimination is real, quantifiable, and immediate
2. Pronunciation Becomes a Burden
There’s a subtle cruelty in workplaces where your name requires explanation every time you introduce yourself. Hiring managers stumble over it. Colleagues butcher it repeatedly. In meetings, you’re constantly correcting people — a micro-aggression that drains energy while signaling that you don’t quite belong. Changing your name removes this daily friction.
3. Professional Advancement
Indians quickly learn that their ethnic identity can be a ceiling, not a bridge. Names become a calculus: Is keeping my identity worth limiting my career? For many, the pragmatic answer is no. Changing your name isn’t about preference — it’s about survival in a system that penalizes difference
4. Social Integration
Beyond careers, there’s a social dimension. Getting hired is one thing; actually fitting in is another. An anglicized name makes social interaction frictionless. Americans don’t have to feel uncomfortable around difference. Indians don’t have to be the foreign one. Everyone is more comfortable.
The Hypocrisy Is Structural
Here’s where your original critique hits hardest: Americans almost never do this in reverse.
When Americans move to India, the UK, Australia, or anywhere else, they keep their names intact. A “Mike” remains Mike. A “Jennifer” doesn’t become “Jaya.” They face no equivalent pressure, no hiring discrimination tied to their names, no systematic barrier that rewards assimilation.
This isn’t because Americans are individually more principled. It’s because they carry institutional power with them. American names aren’t foreign in most of the world — they’re prestigious. They suggest education, wealth, reliability. An American’s name is assumed to be correct; an Indian’s is assumed to be difficult.
The asymmetry reveals the truth: name-changing isn’t a choice born from respect for local culture. It’s a symptom of power imbalance. Indians adapt because they have to. Americans don’t adapt because they don’t have to.
The Trap of Individual Solutions to Systemic Problems
This is where the hypocrisy becomes philosophical. By normalizing name changes, we’re essentially telling Indian immigrants: “The system discriminates against you, so change yourself to fit it.”
This approach has consequences:
- It makes discrimination invisible. If discrimination isn’t obvious because everyone has adapted to it, it becomes self-inflicted rather than systemic.
- It shifts responsibility. Instead of asking “Why does American society penalize different names?” we ask “Why don’t you just change yours?”
- It surrenders identity. Each name change is a small surrender of cultural identity on the altar of professional acceptance.
Researchers themselves have pushed back: “We do not suggest immigrants to Anglicise their ethnic names in order to avoid discrimination,” warns Harvard research, because “this puts the onus on immigrants to promote equity
The Growing Resistance
Not everyone accepts this bargain anymore. Some Indian immigrants and their children are consciously resisting, keeping their names despite the friction, treating it as “a symbol of successful resistance to assimilation.”
Activists are pushing systemic solutions instead. California passed a historic ban on caste discrimination. Recruiters are learning to value diversity rather than demanding homogeneity. Some companies now anonymize resumes to remove racial bias.
But these changes move at glacial speed. Meanwhile, individuals still face rent to pay and careers to build.
What This Reveals About Assimilation
The name-change phenomenon exposes how assimilation really works in America. It’s not a free exchange of cultures — it’s a hierarchy where the dominant culture’s comfort is prioritized over minority identity. It’s a system that says: “You’re welcome here, but only if you make us comfortable by becoming more like us.”
Meanwhile, Americans anywhere in the world remain comfortable as they are. No one asks them to change. No one makes it worth their while. They don’t have to choose between their name and their career.
That asymmetry is the hypocrisy. Not that Indians change names — that’s rational survival. But that we’ve normalized it so completely that it feels like personal preference rather than what it actually is: adaptive response to discrimination masked as cultural assimilation.
The real question isn’t whether Indians should change their names. It’s why, in a diverse nation built by immigrants, we still make it necessary.
