You’re getting Kemi’s surname wrong, Mr Jenrick ... and a few more mistakes that everyone makes

People who feign carelessness over how to pronounce a rival's name are trying to show how relatively big they are, but really it’s just a pitiful power play for losers, writes Rowan (definitely not Rowena) Pelling

I long thought that Kemi Badenoch’s surname was pronounced Bad-e-noch. In my defence, it’s because it couldn’t help but remind me of the gripping Australian psychological horror film The Babadook, in which a top-hat-wearing monster emerges from the pages of a pop-up children’s book. (Apologies, Kemi!) It was only recently that I learnt the correct pronunciation was Bade-noch, or, as the Conservative leader said crisply to one interlocutor in 2024: “There is no bad in Bay-de-noch.” Point taken; by everyone, it appears, except Robert Jenrick, who surely got the memo far earlier than most.

Following his defection to Reform, Jenrick was grilled by the broadcaster Kate McCann, who asked why he’d mispronounced his former boss’s surname three times in his public statement. Jenrick responded with epic disingenuousness – “I honestly have no idea what you’re talking about” – before double-dissing all women in public life with this follow-up: “If you, Kate, think this is important, then you need your head checking.” Yeah, who cares how you pronounce Aung San Suu Kyi, unless you’re a Rohingya dissident facing one of Myanmar’s “clearance operations”.

At this point in the crossfire, I can guarantee most female listeners would be crystal clear on the importance of pronouncing women’s names correctly. We know that when a man neglects to do so – having had ample opportunity to grasp it – it’s a sign of contempt. Who can forget how frequently Donald Trump mangled Kamala Harris’s Christian name, flipping between “Kam-ala”, “Camel-a”, “Comala” and “Camilla” at will? The US president admitted he “couldn’t care less” about the way he said her name. In fact, he relished the tactic so much that he also went full mangle on the Somali-American congresswoman Ilhan Omar, calling her “Elon Omar” and even, “whatever the hell her name is”.

‘I don’t usually advocate petty revenge, but in Robot Baldrick’s case, I’m prepared to make an exception’ (Getty/PA)

Trump’s boorish strategy put me in mind of the misogynistic world of so-called “pick-up artists” (made infamous by Neil Strauss’s book on the topic), where a key technique to wrongfoot women is called “negging”. Basically, the P-UA targets his chosen victim with small but lethal put-downs: “You’re smarter than I expected.” “Interesting skirt: my aunt has one like that.” Or, “You’d be in good shape if you worked out more.” Not bothering to remember someone’s name is just another form of none-too-subtle power play.

The fact is, most women I know can recall multiple occasions when a boss, boyfriend or relative stranger used a similar trick to undermine her professional or emotional standing. In the late 1980s, I worked for a pub manager in Oxford, who had much of The Office’s David Brent about him. He insisted on calling me “Rowena” and refused to believe a mere “girl” could have the same name as “that bloke on the TV” (Rowan Atkinson). He also didn’t think that women could be funny, unlike “that bloke on the TV”. Misnaming me felt like a petty (but borderline understandable) revenge on a posh-voiced student who would shortly escape his limited orbit.

The experience clarified for me how maddening friends found it when I messed up their names due to my own tin ear. One of my dearest pals is Anglo-Iranian, and it took a few months – back in the days when we were novice journalists together – to grasp that Kamin was not pronounced “Carmen” or “Ka-meen”. I then watched, embarrassed, as plenty of other white Britons who’d not tangled too much with modern languages, let alone Farsi, also mangled her none-too-complicated name. The same sort of people who nevertheless delight in telling you that the Marquess of Cholmondeley is pronounced “Chum-lee”.

Of course, we can’t get all of the pronunciation right, all of the time. I spent 26 years of my life saying David Bough-ey, rather than Bowie, despite being an ardent fangirl. This week’s gathering of the great, good, bad, obscenely wealthy and deranged in Davos reminds me that it was last week o’clock when I learnt the Swiss town is actually pronounced Da-vose, rather than sounding uncannily like the leader of the Daleks (Davros). JK Rowling's last name, is actually “Rowling”, to rhyme with “trolling” or “rolling”, not “fouling”, despite the fact that most of America would insist on the latter.

“I answer to both,” Rowling told The Guardian’s Decca Aitkenhead in 2012. “Rowling is a fairly horrible name anyway, so some might argue that it is improved by being mispronounced.”

None of which means Badenoch should let the treacherous, mis-monikering defector to Reform off the hook. I don’t usually advocate petty revenge, but in Robot Baldrick’s case, I’m prepared to make an exception.