It’s a quirk of our multi-culturalism, especially in South Africa – we butcher each other’s names all the time. It isn’t always easy to figure out how to pronounce someone’s name if it isn’t one that you have come across before. LinkedIn wants to make this easier, by now allowing users to record the pronunciation of their names and link it to their account for others to listen to.
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For some it may be trivial, but for others it is really important to pronounce people’s names and have their own names pronounced correctly. Especially in the workplace or when engaging with someone new on behalf of a business. The feature from LinkedIn hopes to promote a more inclusive workplace where different cultures and its names are respected.
In order to use this feature, you have to record your name on a mobile device – iOS or Android – which can be up to 10 seconds long. Other users will be able to hear the short clips on either mobile or desktop, and access it by pressing a small button on the user’s profile, next to their name.
In a recent blog post, LinkedIn said that the feature is now available to all of its 690 million monthly users, after several users have noticed the feature pop up over the last several months as the company was testing it. You can find the simple instructions to use the feature here.
“Everyone, including myself, makes mistakes when pronouncing other people’s names,” said Joseph Akoni, a LinkedIn product manager who worked on the feature. “I’ve encountered this personally with my Nigerian middle name—there’s a 99% chance someone won’t pronounce it correctly on the first try.”
With eleven official languages in South Africa and many of them unintelligible to each other, this could certainly be very useful feature to employ.
