At this weekend’s home fixture against Ipswich Town, Brentford will join top-flight clubs to mark the Premier League’s No Room for Racism campaign.
As part of the club’s activity, we will be focusing on the importance of names and identity, emphasising why correct pronunciation and learning the stories behind names can help promote inclusive and respectful environments for us all.
Football is fortunate to attract players from across the world. Yet, often, their names can be mispronounced or misspelt.
Research shows that a simple, impactful way of building community and connection is to encourage respectful interactions around names, including accurate pronunciation and understanding names’ meaning and history.
For many people with Black heritage or minority ethnic backgrounds, names often carry deep meanings, and reflect familial histories and cultural traditions and language. Where names are mis-spoken, or 'simplified' for speakers of a different language, it may be inferred as a lack of respect that impacts a person’s sense of belonging or identity.
Saturday’s fixture which takes place during Black History Month, with its theme this year Reclaiming Narratives, Brentford is encouraging everyone to take part in an activity recommended by the Say My Name project and use the power of names to learn about each other and build strong, inclusive communities.
At Brentford, inclusivity is at the heart of everything we do and creating strong, supportive communities is important in living our club values of togetherness, respectful and progressive.
Welcoming, respectful communities make people feel confident, communicate better and perform better, especially on the pitch.
Ben Ryan, performance director, said: “We do everything we can to make our players and staff feel respected and that they belong at Brentford.
"When you feel safe in your environment, you can be your authentic self and perform to the best of your ability. That’s what brings the club closer to success.”
Get involved in our matchday activity
In support of the Say My Name project, we’ll be sharing phonetic pronunciations of our players’ names on matchday ahead of kick-off, so that names are understood and respected.
We’ll also be encouraging our fans to ask each other to share the meanings behind their names, so that we can better understand each other’s stories and identities.
If you’re headed to the Gtech on matchday, why not take a moment to ask someone about their name? It could be the person you go with regularly, someone that sits near you that you recognise, or a complete stranger.
Here’s some ideas of what you can ask them:
How do you pronounce your name?
What’s the meaning of your name?
Is there a story or family history attached to your name?
We also encourage you to take these questions beyond matchday at home, work or in school.
Outside of matchday, the club hosted an internal event discussing the themes of the Say My Name project. Staff were invited to a conversation on respectful interactions around names with club ambassador Marcus Gayle and former Bees player Marcus Bean.
About Say My Name
The Say My Name project was first launched by Professor Jane Bryan at Warwick University.
Professor Bryan’s research explores the importance of names in building inclusive communities. It found that:
Our names represent our identities and hearing our names is powerful
Respectful interactions around names help to build community and connection
For some, misnaming can feed into a much wider pattern of discrimination and harassment
Names have stories, unique meanings and are a celebration of our diversity, but research shows that incorrect pronunciation of names has a negative impact on creating a sense of belonging.
Repeated misspeaking of names, adapting or shortening someone’s name without consent, may also imply a lack of care or attention to the person.
Professor Bryan said: “Being called by our names encourages visibility and connection. Paying attention to the importance of saying names, and saying them right, is how we can respect the identity, race, ethnicity and individuality of others to ensure they feel that they belong.”
In response, the project has published a list of recommendations and guidance aimed at respectful interactions around names, including encouraging open conversations about pronunciation, name histories and negative experiences of misnaming. The recommendations have been influential in creating inclusive communities in schools and workplaces since 2022.