Maitreyi Ramakrishnan plays protagonist Devi Vishwakumar in the Netflix series “Never Have I Ever.”
In 2021, the 20-year-old tweeted a voice note about how to correctly pronounce her name, as people had been getting it wrong her whole life.
“Names are so important, and I find that it’s a big part of your identity — it personally is for me, I love my name so, so much,” she said.
She said that when she was younger, she would tell people they could mispronounce her name because she believed she was inconveniencing them. But she now insists people get it right, both when meeting new people and when being interviewed.
“Like this is my name, I’m sorry but I get to call the shots here,” she said. “There is one answer, and that answer is my own. There is no discussion.”
—Maitreyi Ramakrishnan (@ramakrishnannn)
Ramakrishnan said nobody wants their name to be “butchered,” but sometimes we just accept it and that “really, really sucks.”
“I hope you guys don’t have to go through that too often,” she said.
She clarified that the correct pronunciation is “My-tray-yee Ra-ma-krish-nin.”
“That’s how I like it,” she said. “I’m not expecting people to switch up their accents on me, just asking for basic respect.”
