Here's Every Late Night Host Pronouncing Hasan Minhaj’s Name Incorrectly
As you may have heard, Patriot Act with Hasan Minhaj has been canceled by Netflix. Aside from shining its light on underrepresented, but exceptionally important topics, Patriot Act was a great resource for lazy social studies teachers and brown fuckboys alike. Standing in front of a screen instead of sitting behind a desk, truly, no one else does it like Hasan. In honor of Netflix doing him wrong, let’s dive into some other late-night and day time hosts trying to say their colleague of color’s name.
To break it down: Hasan Minhaj is pronounced H ä · säñ / M í ñ · ĥ ä ĵ, which can also be easily pronounced as Hasan Minhaj. Hasan’s wife, Nicki Minhaj (yes that one), has had much less difficult when it comes to people pronouncing her name correctly.
Jimmy Fallon’s approach to pronouncing it is a little overdone and tired, to be quite honest. With some melanin, a hooked nose, and a name starting with an H often comes some misplaced phlegm. Jimmy decided to go with the ever so classic “Khasan Meenha.” Here, we can see Jimmy trying his absolute best, putting his throat into it and all. He immediately followed it with an unsolicited Bob Dylan impression.
Chelsea Handler went with the standard “Has-On Min-jaj, which we can all appreciate. Now, it’s difficult to dig too deep into Chelsea since she suffered the same fate at N*tflix, but the beauty in this one is the simplicity. An extra j? Who's going to notice that one? “Hass-on Min-aj,” the general mispronunciation, comes so close. Chelsea’s articulation speaks to me in particular because of its original spin on a take so tried and true.
Stephen Colbert, also a man with a name, makes a great case for the silent letter. Stephen went in beautifully with the first name, saying Hasan as Hasan, but fumbled with Mihaj just a bit. “Colbert,” in case you didn’t know, is actually pronounced cole · bear. The silent “t” adds some personality, a little sparkle if you will, and Stephen felt that Hasan deserved that too. Instead of “Minhaj,” Colbert went with “Minha,” which is a great step in the right direction. After giving it some thought, “Minha” does have a nice ring to it.
Hasan’s appearance on The Ellen Show, in my opinion, was the prequel to Dakota Johnson’s acclaimed “Actually no, that’s not the truth, Ellen...” A few moments after sitting down, Hasan kindly, but bitingly corrects Ellen, revealing the true pronunciation of “Hasan Minhaj” to the world. In a shocking moment, he compared himself to white boys of the month, Timothée Chalamet and Ansel Elgort, whose names, for some reason, are much easier for people to say. After repeating his name correctly a few times, Ellen decided to go with “Hassin Menish” before calling a PA a stupid slut and punching her in the throat. Ellen’s diction was a personal favorite of mine. I can admire it for the effort.
In a post Hasan-Mihaj-Saying-His-Name-Correctly-On-Ellen world, the late-night hosts banded together in a few sessions of speech therapy to finally learn how to only kinda it right. I’m sure Hasans across the world appreciate their efforts. But hey, at least no one called him Hussein (except Bill Maher).
