Why Are Republicans Still Botching Kamala Harris’ Name?

If they wanted to pronounce it 'Comma-la,' they would.

Kamala Harris is not new to politics, nor the public scrutiny that comes with it. Harris is also certainly not new to attacks dripping in misogyny, racism and xenophobia. She has weathered it all throughout her career as California’s attorney general, the state’s senator and the vice president of the United States ― the whole time reminding the public of how to pronounce her Indian first name.

So, why are so many Republicans and right-wing talking heads still mispronouncing “Kamala,” even ― and especially ― after she recently took the president’s place in running against Donald Trump as the presumptive Democratic nominee?

“They are doing it on purpose,” Nicole Holliday, a sociolinguistics professor at the University of California, Berkeley, told HuffPost. “Some people are doing it on purpose. Some people are not exactly doing it on purpose, but they’re doing it because it’s what everyone around them does ― in particular, Trump has a cult of personality around him, and so what he says goes, and that’s how he’s pronouncing it.”

Harris has long clarified to the public that her name is to be pronounced “comma-la, like the punctuation mark.” During her 2016 run for Senate, Harris released a PSA about her name. Eight years and many corrections later, the politician’s name still takes up space ― her campaign’s first ad released Thursday shows crowds chanting “Kamala” using the candidate’s pronunciation.

(The Indian name Kamala, which in Sanskrit translates to “lotus,” is not traditionally pronounced “comma-la.” As detailed in Slate earlier this week, “com’la” is much closer to the original pronunciation, with no heavy emphasis on any of the syllables.)