Students and teachers who chose to keep their ethnic names usually run into an irritating obstacle: pronunciation.
Acquaintances might be willing to try to learn the correct accent but mispronunciation is a given.
Anthropology Lecturer Erick Castellanos explained that while some people know the tricks of Spanish accents, they miss the mark about as often as they hit it.
"In my last name, there's the double 'l,' which is pronounced as a 'y.' A lot of people get that right," he said.
"They also know that the 'n' can have a different sound - when it has a tild over it - so people will stick the tild over the 'n' to show that they know something about Spanish, but it's actually incorrect. Their knowledge of written Spanish doesn't match their fluency," Castellanos said.
With names that do require accents for correct pronunciation, a person's decision to keep the accents or to erase them may indicate their desire to anglicize their names.
"With Spanish and French names that require accents there's a difference when people put those accents in or not," Castellanos said.
"It's more subtle. It's not really changing the last name, but the pronunciation would be different," he added.
The adherence to traditional pronunciation is also a question when determining one's name in a foreign-language speaking country.
"My name is Spanish. So people here don't know how to say it," Castellanos said. "I personally say it the way I grew up knowing it, but I don't mind if it's mispronounced...whereas other people may correct it."
If the change in accents is purposefully meant to change one's name, it may be for a utilitarian reason.
"Someone who is trying to distance themselves from their home culture might pronounce it the American way," Castellanos said.
