What is in a Name? Finding Belonging in Student Comedy About Immigrant Experiences

The hue of The Dome is a soft rosé, the atmosphere alight with the excited nonsensical chatter of students, as they eagerly wait for the show’s commencement. Suddenly, the gentle light is replaced by darkness. The chatter ceases. Here, in The Dome at Yale Schwarzman Center, and from my stage-right seating, I see a spotlight illuminate a young Indian woman with medium length, wavy black hair. She is standing center stage. She is dressed in a comedically oversized bowling shirt; the multihued grey, brown, and black stripped button down, is buttoned up. She has a microphone in hand. Then taking a deep breath and releasing it, begins “My parents met in the 90s . . .”

I watch, laugh, and reflect intently as Yale undergraduate student Tara Bhat ’25 comically catalogues stories of migration and being raised as a brown kid in rural America. In her one hour stand up special “My Name Is Still Tara Bhat.” Tara’s wry, sarcastic sense of humor is akin to Gen Z, refreshing in the sense of its relatability. Laughter steadily ripples through the auditorium as she speaks of first crushes, competitive older siblings, and college experiences. But within the comedic narrative is a motif that every first generation American knows all too well. It is a story of the rediscovery of one’s cultural identity and a reclamation of one’s given name, honoring the ones who came before us and the parents that so proudly named us.

I listen intently as Tara weaves this narrative through expertly conceived jokes, revealing her meaning gradually rather than all at once. In this format she reveals that after 18 years of being known to the world as Tara, so often mispronounced “terra bat,” finally here at Yale College she reclaims her given name Tara, which is correctly pronounced - “thah-rah butt,” with Tara originating from the Sanskrit word for “star.” No matter what others may have thought, she is still Tara Bhat.

Tara’s narrative resonates in the very soul of this listener and as I sit in the audience, I begin to recall my own story.

I felt from an early age the pressure to fit in, to reduce my ‘otherness’ and acclimate to the expectations of my own rural hometown. This pressure, as with so many others before me, encouraged me from an early age to try out different names. First, I shortened my name from Omotola, which in my parents’ native Yoruba translates to “a child is worth more than wealth,” to Tola. When that had no significant reduction to my ‘otherness,’ as my elementary school teachers often choked on the complex pronunciation, I later went by my more Western-sounding middle name Michael in a desperate attempt to blend in. I found this name was more agreeable to the palette of my early instructors. I passed years in this pattern of trepidation and like Tara it wasn’t until college that I reclaimed my full given name, unyielding in every beautifully uttered consonant and vowel -

“My name is [Thar-a Butt]” a soft yet firm voice declares in the distance. I jolt up as my wandering mind is brought back to the room, The Dome. As I survey the audience, I see the significance of this moment as it resonates across diverse expressions. Among them second year Yale MBA student Chioma Nwosu, who later expressed that the show was a “comedic echo of my own personal journey of reclaiming my name in predominantly white spaces.” A beautifully composed summary of the show that I could not have expressed better myself.

As I reflect and write this piece, echoes of this expedition still ring fervently throughout modern society. It was only two nights ago that I sat around a crackling bonfire, catching up with two old high school friends. As our breath, visible in the cold, rose to collide with the winter chill, we spoke of our names. We talked of the daily compromise of our names to fit in to social groups that never truly knew us. We spoke of how differently we approach our given names now, and how similar this new generation of high school and college students are to our former selves. My friend met a kid at a bar named Aksha who insisted his name was Shay. This type of compromise is a complex journey of self-discovery that every first generation American must go through. I had felt from an early age the pressure to fit in, to reduce my ‘otherness.’ Tonight, in the shadow of Tara’s spotlight and the embrace of laughter, I feel like I belong.