People Are Just Realising How To Say Kamala Harris' Name Properly, But She Told Us All Years Ago

On Sunday (the 21st of July), Joe Biden dropped out of the 2024 presidential race and endorsed vice-president Kamala Harris as the Democratic nominee in his place. 

Understandably, her name has been in everyone’s mouth since ― but BBC radio and TV presenter Tina Daheleyshared on X (formerly Twitter) this morning that a lot of us have been saying Kamala’s name wrong. 

In a video titled “The correct pronunciation of Kamala Harris,” Tina said, “I think it’s a good time to try and get this pronunciation right once and for all.”

How does Kamala pronounce her name?

“I’ll tell you what it’s not,” Daheley began her video; “it is not KAM-uh-luh Harris. It is not Kah-mah-luh Harris. It IS Comma-lah Harris. According to her own memoir in 2019, it’s like the punctuation mark ‘comma.’ Comma-lah.”

“Comma-lah Harris, vice-president of the United States,” she ended the clip.

Another X user commented beneath Tina’s post, showing a video that Kamala Harris put out herself in 2016 to teach people how to say her name. 

Tucker Carlson, a conservative political commentator, pronounced Harris’ name incorrectly on his show last week. 

His guest, Richard Goodstein, an advisor for Democratic campaigns, corrected the host, saying “Out of respect for somebody who’s going to be on the national ticket, pronouncing her name right is kind of a bare minimum.”

Carlson responded, “So what?” to the point, leading Steven Petrow of USA Today to explain that “saying a name correctly isn’t about blue or red state politics but is actually about respect and identity.”

People had thoughts in the comments

Underneath Daheley’s X, Allie Renison wrote, “Yep, it’s really not hard.”

“I’m always mortified when I get it wrong because I didn’t just ask. Spot on – let’s normalise asking the person themselves and then sticking to their wishes,” another X user commented.

The X has gotten 946k views as of the time of writing, so here’s hoping more of us learn to say the politician’s name correctly ASAP. 

After all, she’s been telling us for years...