America’s other Kamalas on the VP’s ascendance

Growing up in rural Ohio, Kamala Mohammed often went by the name, Kami. Her parents chose her name to honor the heritage of her father, an immigrant from Trinidad of Indian descent, but also because it was easily anglicized.

Now, with the emergence of Kamala Harris, the vice president and now Democratic presidential nominee, Mohammed uses Kami or other shortened versions less often, since people recognize her name. She was initially skeptical of Harris' political prospects, a perception she said was influenced by her own experience.

"It took me a few days to realize that she was being taken seriously and that many people were enthusiastic and accepting of her as a candidate," Mohammed, 62, told POLITICO. "I am heartened."

In the lead-up to Tuesday's election that could make her the first woman of color to be president, Harris has talked sparingly about her identity on the campaign trail, instead leaning into her promise to be a "president for all Americans." But she doesn't have to talk about being a woman, or being the daughter of Jamaican and Indian immigrants, for it to be obvious to others.

And perhaps no one understands that better than other women named Kamala living in the United States.

The name Kamala first appeared in the Social Security Administration's baby name database in 1955, when six girls named Kamala were born. It peaked in 1964, the year that the future vice president was one of 105 babies named Kamala nationwide. The name's popularity has dwindled since, with an average of nine Kamalas born per year between 2001 and 2019, though it experienced a slight resurgence with 18 babies given that name in 2020 and 25 in 2021.

The name is perhaps most widely known as the Sanskrit word for lotus, a meaning that has prompted positive memes among some Indian Americans as Harris seeks the office often abbreviated to POTUS. The symbolism of the flower also resonates as a signal of perseverance and overcoming adversity — traits that several women named Kamala whom POLITICO spoke with suggested the U.S. as a whole could stand to learn from right now.

"The lotus is a very beautiful flower that grows in muddy water. The mud is equivalent to the challenges in your life or in a situation, or in a community or in a country," said Kamala Maddali, who lives in Pennsylvania and has thought heavily about the meaning of her name in the context of her own life challenges — even writing a book on the subject.

Women named Kamala have various stories of how they were given their names.

"Even for my generation, the name was a little bit old-fashioned," said Kamala Venkatesh, 74, of San Diego, whose parents named her after Indian independence activist Kamala Nehru.

Venkatesh grew up in the Indian state of Karnataka and immigrated to the U.S. at the age of 20, later attending graduate school and becoming a microbiologist. Decades later, she read about the emergence of then-Sen. Harris, and saw parallels between her own life and that of Harris' mother, Shyamala Gopalan, who was raised in the neighboring Indian state of Tamil Nadu before coming to the U.S. and becoming a cancer researcher.

Venkatesh recalled watching Harris' national profile grow, beginning with her questioning of now-Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh in 2018, and being struck by both the California senator and the impact of her Indian immigrant mother.

"For her to have raised a daughter like Kamala is something very unique," Venkatesh said. "I feel that this is such a unique situation, Kamala running for the office of the presidency when even Hillary Clinton couldn't be elected."

On the campaign trail, Harris has leaned into her first name : Supporters wave signs with all-caps "KAMALA" in red, white and blue; when she took over for President Joe Biden, the prolific campaign-run social media account formerly known as Biden HQ renamed itself Kamala HQ. The branding is not unique to Harris' campaign — Clinton similarly embraced her first name in her 2016 bid, as have presidential candidates like Carly Fiorina, Pete Buttigieg and Beto O'Rourke.

But the name Kamala is not Carly, Hillary, Pete or even Beto.

"As a woman named Kamala, seeing someone like Kamala on the main stage, especially with a non-traditional name — it happens to be mine, but also it is a name that isn't one of the quote, unquote, names that are typically associated with white, Anglo-Saxon politicians and leaders — I think it is significant on a lot of different fronts," said Kamala Avila-Salmon, a producer and founder of Kas Kas Productions, a production company affiliated with Lionsgate that works on culturally relevant content.

(Avila-Salmon, who immigrated to the U.S. from Jamaica as a child, pronounces her first name differently than the vice president, with the emphasis on the second syllable — "Kamala like koala," she explained.)

Women named Kamala universally know what it's like to have their name misread, mispronounced or misheard. There are multiple pronunciations — though not that many. Several of the women who spoke with POLITICO pronounced their own first names subtly differently from how the vice president says hers. But they also recalled encountering mispronunciations that were just plain wrong: Camilla and Carmela were just some of the variations (the insertion of non-existent letters is particularly irritating, multiple women said).

The Democratic National Convention in August featured Harris' young nieces teaching the audience how to pronounce her name: It's like "Comma-la," they instructed. But former President Donald Trump has at times mispronounced Harris' name on the campaign trail, mixing up which syllable he stressed or suggesting it doesn't matter how he says it. He experimented in August with calling her "Kamabla" both while speaking and in social media posts, though he mostly abandoned that bit after a few days.

Kamala Vanderkolk recalled the pause that substitute teachers would make before reading her name and inevitably mispronouncing it. When she and her husband chose names for their children, they agreed to stick to names that teachers could pronounce easily on the first try.

When Vanderkolk ran for state representative in Colorado in 2018, she made buttons to explain how to pronounce her name: a comma, the punctuation mark, followed by "la" — a shorthand that Harris' supporters have also picked up as a means of explaining the vice president's name. When Vanderkolk met Harris at a Denver event the following year for Harris' 2020 presidential campaign, Vanderkolk introduced herself and shared one of the leftover campaign buttons. Harris, she said, immediately recognized the simple explanation for how to pronounce their shared first name.

"Getting someone's name right is the most basic level of respect that you can give someone," said Vanderkolk, who is white and whose parents named her after a character from the Hermann Hesse novel "Siddhartha." "You can disagree with their ideas or their policy stances, but if you can't even try to get the name right, then that just shows that the person has no intention of showing respect."

The notion of respect, and when women do or don't receive it, has resonated for women named Kamala watching the vice president navigate a shortened campaign under the brightest lights. Sexist and racist comments about the candidate break through more for women who have been on the receiving end of something similar.

Kamala Grasso, 57, of Massachusetts, recalled studying engineering in a male-dominated environment and being the only woman in the engineering department early in her career. She sees Harris as constantly held to a higher standard, in a way that reflects how she at times had to navigate herself.

"You're stuck because you can't react in a really forceful, angry way as much as you want to. You always have to be the diplomat. You always have to be gracious, and you always have to toe a fine line and everything," Grasso said. "And that's what she has to do. The minute she says one thing that's off, that's not perfect, it's like, 'Oh, my god. Did you see what she said?' And that is so tiring."

With election season coming to a close and Harris' candidacy in focus, women named Kamala have also adjusted to the reality of seeing and hearing their unique name — and at times, in the negative constructs of politics that many Americans have become accustomed to.

Grasso's husband, Paul, bought an "I Love Kamala" shirt as a show of support — one sold typically as an indicator of support for the Democratic nominee, but in his case, also for his wife.

Whether she wins or loses, there is a different silver lining to Harris' candidacy for these women: Many more Americans have learned how to pronounce the name they share with the vice president. Several women named Kamala noted how strangers were far more likely to recognize their name, or default to the way Harris says her name when seeing it in writing. And they felt more comfortable using their real names out in public, like when ordering coffee.

"The last couple months, anywhere I go, I'm like, 'No, I can use my name now, confidently,'" said Vanderkolk, from Colorado. "And if someone doesn't know it, that just tells me that they live under a rock."