Following President Trump’s inauguration, Alphabet, Google’s parent company, announced that they were debuting a new feature across Google products: spell check for names. “For too long people have been allowed to misspell the names of venerated individuals like Kirstjen Nielsen,” said Alphabet spokesperson Christine Nelson. “When we had DEI policies in place, it was considered rude to fix people’s spelling. Now that those policies are gone, we can Make Americans Spell Right Again!”
There was a swift negative reaction from Google users across the political spectrum. “I was writing a list of White House press secretaries for a school project,” said Bluesky user @pragnyadoespilates. “It let me spell out Karoline Leavitt just fine, but somehow Karine Jean-Pierre became ‘Carrie John Peterson’? That’s not her name!” On Facebook, user Marc Bronowski wrote, “I thought the END OF WOKE was supposed to HELP people like me, but now my email signature has been changed to ‘Mark Brewski’. Google, this is UNACCEPTABLE!”
When asked for comment on the negative reactions, Nelson reiterated Alphabet’s stance that this tool would “help return Google to the pre-DEI ‘good ol’ days’ when Americans knew how to spell and people changed their names to American ones.”
