Why do names and how they're pronounced matter?

What is something that belongs to you, but is used more often by others? Your name of course!

We all have one, some of us have several and many people view their name as a big part of their identity.

A name can reveal a lot about where someone is from, their family's culture and heritage, and some people are even named after famous public figures.

Names can hold a great deal of importance, yet people with uncommon names may find that others tend to mispronounce them.

American vice-president Kamala Harris, who is of Jamaican and Indian heritage, has a name that lots of people have struggled to say correctly - including some of the people she works with! She isn't the only person in the public eye to have dealt with this.

Social media influencer and cancer scientist Yewande Biala (pronounced Ye-wan-day Bi-al-lah), who rose to fame on a reality TV show, recently spoke out about people mispronouncing her name and why it's important that we all make an effort to pronounce names that are less familiar to us correctly.

She's talked a lot about her experiences with 'microaggressions'. This is when someone says or does something, either intentionally or unintentionally, which communicates negative attitudes towards one or multiple members of particular groups, for example those belonging to an ethnic minority.

An example of a microaggression could be someone mispronouncing another person's name wrong on purpose, or not making an effort to learn a person's name even when they've been corrected.

Social media influencer Yewande Biala has spoken out on the importance of pronouncing people's names correctly

Yewande, who is of Nigerian heritage, first experienced people getting her name wrong at primary school and it's something she's encountered as an adult too.

"Before roll call, they [teachers] would open the book and I could see by the look on their faces that they wouldn't even try or they just couldn't pronounce my name. When it came to my name, it was a deep breath in and a laugh and 'Oh, I'm not even going to try and pronounce this', or 'This is so difficult'. When they did it was butchered so bad," she told Newsround.

Yewande remembers going home and asking her mum why she hadn't been given a "normal name" that was much easier to pronounce. Her mother used this as an opportunity to introduce her daughter to the special meaning behind it.

"My grandma died and I was the first girl in the family to be born [after]. So basically, it means she's come back as me, it means mother has returned. It's such a beautiful meaning," Yewande said.

This discovery allowed the social media star to understand just how important her name was and it gave her the confidence to correct people who got it wrong.

She's also stressed that not being able to get someone's name right at first isn't a bad thing, and asking them exactly how to pronounce their names is actually a great way to show them you care about getting it right.

"It's important to recognise that your name is your identity. Your name matters and your voice also matters," she said.

We want to hear from you - does your name have a special meaning and why does it matter to you? Let us know in the comments!