To bastardise my name:

To bastardise my name is your way of reducing me from a higher to a lower state.

All us black children (and adults) have a story to tell of our experiences with white people and their issue with the  pronunciation  of our names.

How those white people take it upon themselves to " nickname", to shorten and to water down black children's names so it's more convenient for them to address us without them sounding like they have a speech impediment, every time they attempt to pronounce our names.

I have had degrading incidents where a white person would request my second name (my white apartheid name) because they just couldn't be bothered with trying to verbalise the syllables that make up my "ethnic" name.

For me it's small incidents like these where phrases like racism, white privilege and white (perceptual) supremacy come into play. When you take the initiative to push aside what someone is named, the meaning of that name and the entity and significance that that name represents for that person and the culture in which that name and person exists is in. In my view that is a way to make someone submissive...

I never gave it much thought until now but what you are called, your name, becomes so much of how you identify with yourself. It is the first information about yourself that you give away when you first introduce yourself to someone. In school it is the first thing you are taught to write when beginning your school career. In forms it is how you identify yourself to the person who is on the other side of the form. On our first official identification documents, our birth certificates our names our big and bold. 

To take it a step further I know that for many African children the meaning of our names is so valuable.  The become a way for our parents to bestow certain wishes on what they want us to bring to the world and how they want us to  be during our time in the world. In a sense our names become prophetic clues into our purpose here on earth. You encounter names like Lerato (love), Milisuthando (bring forth love), Njabulo (joy), Khethiwe (the chosen one)  which are beautiful names and their meanings even more so. So why bastardise all that beauty?

Next time someone white wants to shorten my name or asks me for white name... I will tell them that bastardising my name is their minds inferior attempt  at reducing me from a higher to a lower state. Like any good speech therapist will say most speech impediments are formed in the mind. Once white people get over their imagined sense of superiority their speech impediment is mostly likely to go away as well.