Opinion: Vivek Should Know Nikki Is An Indian Name And American, Too

In a crowded field of Republican presidential candidates who will say anything, no matter how absurd, for attention, Vivek Ramaswamy stands apart as a spouter of strategic silliness. His views on the Jan. 6 Capitol attack, climate change, the war in Ukraine, single mothers and Juneteenth may be uniformly risible, but they are calculated to ingratiate himself to a specific audience. And his elevation from a curiosity to a contender suggests he has a good bead on the paranoias and prejudices of a sizeable proportion of the party faithful.

But his snide attack on fellow aspirant Nikki Haley over her name represents a failure to read two cultural constituencies - the American whole as well as the Indian-American subset, to which both of them, and I, belong. On his campaign website, Ramaswamy pointedly referred to the former US Ambassador to the United Nations as "Namrata Randhawa," misspelling her first name and using her maiden surname. (She was named Nimarata Nikki Randhawa at birth, is commonly known by her middle name and has used the surname Haley since her 1996 marriage to Michael Haley.)

Haley's response to the gibe was appropriately dismissive: "I'm not going to get into the childish name-calling or whatever, making fun of my name that he's doing," she told Fox News Digital. "I mean, he of all people should know better than that."