Reading about her in the newspaper in Austin, readers came to know little about Debra J. Camacho. Nor do they now possess insight into the lives of Telesforo Chavez Casarez; Jose Antonio Hernandez; Lydia T. Pena; Herminia Perez; Janice Arelene Quinonez; Efrain Rodriquez Esquivel. Nor Julia Ybarbo. Readers do know that they died. Theirs were eight of 40 obituaries that The Austin American-Statesman published on Sunday, August 21, 2016. Each was a human being, beloved, no doubt, by family and friends.
The five women and three men averaged 66 years of life and work. Some presumably bore or fathered children, and almost all presumably started life with names that carry proper accents. All carried names easily found in the Spanish lexicon. But in the final public record and testament of their lives, some of their names were stripped – perhaps carelessly – of the dignity bestowed on them by proper accents. Their names, in effect, were misspelled. They should have read:
Lydia T. Peña
Telesforo Chávez Cásarez
José Antonio Hernández
Efraín Rodríquez Esquivel
Debra J. Camacho
Herminia Pérez
Janice Arelene Quiñonez
Julia Ybarbo
Whether the printing of their incomplete and unfinished names offended the relatives of these now-gone is unknown. The dead at the end might not have cared either about their names being misrepresented. The dying have other things on their minds. And any individual has the right to pronounce, spell, write and accent his or her name any way he or she desires. The First Amendment at the very least protects how one chooses to write and pronounce his or her name. So an individual or family can choose not to pronounce and accent “Peña”, for example, properly.
Yet Peña without the ñ becomes pena, which in Spanish to knowledgeable readers means pity or pain, instead of the more positive group of supporters. Peña without the ñ also sounds vulgar – hardly the expression families would want in a death notice, the last public evidence of a human being’s existence.
Unless a family chooses to not use accents, wanton disregard of accenting Spanish names and surnames amounts to journalistic malpractice, especially as the country’s new demography asserts itself.
Editorial negligence occurs every day in hundreds of newspapers throughout the country when a Spanish name is not accented properly. It happens every minute across the airwaves when television producers fail to properly accent names of individuals on the screen and when their reporters do not pronounce names properly. The same holds true on radio when an unknowing announcer massacres a name in any frequency that like any other name personifies worth and demands respect.
Journalists who do not spell or pronounce names of individuals and places correctly violate the most basic of journalism’s rules to report accurately the facts. A journalist’s integrity takes a hit each time any name is presented improperly or mispronounced. Beyond disrespecting human beings and devaluing them mindlessly, a journalist diminishes his or her professional integrity by demonstrating incompetence. It is not just Hispanic/Latinos who notice. An increasing number of non-Hispanic/Latinos now know Spanish and Spanish names and surnames.
By not requiring their staffs and systems and processes to treat Spanish names and surnames properly, media organizations chip away at the very credibility that abets the amorphous muddle that the market has become. Some news executives have struggled – and some have failed miserably – trying to adapt to a new market in which an estimated 90 percent of Hispanics/Latinos in the United States carry an accent in at least one of their names.
Growing a news entity these days is a formidable challenge. But at the very least, news executives should make sure that the most basic tools of their trade are not lost. In a world in which every margin is important and new, niche markets created, the growth of the Hispanic/Latino market alone might not be a matter of life or death.
But media entities should at least keep alive and in some cases revive solid journalistic principles and practices.