Tuesday, October 27, 2009

What's in a Name? Hotel Owner Tells Staff to Ditch Their Names

This really frosted me. In multi-cultural Taos, New Mexico where people go to soak in the culture and beauty, a new hotel owner notified his Hispanic staff that they were to ditch their names and take on Anglo names. In the USA Today article, it describes a possibly ignorant approach by the hotel owner. Apparently once he "arrived at the Taos hotel, he banned hotel employees from speaking Spanish in his presence, directed some to Anglicize their names and fired several Hispanic employees."

Fortunately the community of Taos, who value their Native American and Hispanic roots, protested and the hotel-owner was soon "educated." The name of the hotel is The Whitten Inn, just in case you might be visiting Taos. The website is still under the former name... Paragon Inn.

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