My wife and I are going to Colorado this weekend. She asked me last night, “Should we wear masks while we fly and in the airports?” I thought this was a silly question, so I asked it on Twitter. One of my mission buddies, who happens to be very sarcastic, said in reply “Only if you want to get “randomly selected” as a possible terrorist.” I replied “That happens anyway because people think my last name is “Hass lam” because most 6’4″ 275lb white men are terrorists.” A fellow co-worker caught on to the conversation and added “I just found out a co-worker is a terrorist,” joking of course. This all lead to this post about the true origins of my last name.

Doing a quick Google search I found a nasty looking page with some good information. The origin of the name is “One who came from Haslam (hazel land), in Lancashire: or from Hasland (hazel grove), in Derbyshire. Lancashire is in the northwestern part of England and Derbyshire is in the East Midlands of England. A quick Wikipedia search told me that Haslam literally means “dweller under the hazel tree.”

Enough with the history, lets go over some funny instances of my past with regards to my last name.

2000 – I was a sophomore in high school and a friend of mine came up with a little song she would sing every time she saw me. It was really annoying, but I pretended to like it. It went, “Tim Haslam is the bomb, from Islam.” This is officially the first time my name got referenced with anything having to do with Islam.

2004 – Right before I went on my mission, my dad, brother and I went to San Diego on a golf trip. The airlines noticed three “Haslam” with normal first names, Kevin, Ben and Tim and thought, “these guys have to be terrorists.” We got pulled aside when we got to the airport and were forced to go through the “high security” checkpoints to make sure we were safe.

2008 – I had a college professor that pronounced my name “Hass lam” the first time she was handing out papers. When she looked up and saw me getting the paper, her mouth dropped to the floor. I got the paper and she just looked at me. It was pretty funny. I said, “It’s Haslam, like as if I were English.” She just nodded her head.

Later 2008 – I got invited to a Halo night at a friend of a friends house. Everyone just called me Tim. The host works down the street from me and I went to talk to him one day and the receptionist asked my name and I told her. A minute later he came out and was like “Oh, it’s you. I thought it was some Islamic guy looking for me.” Long story short, he told everyone at Halo and now everyone says my name as if it is Islamic. Any time I kill someone in Halo, they always say, “Typical terrorist” or “He went on a suicide mission,” you get the idea.

Today – I posed the question to the twitter world. There aren’t many people that follow me, but some did weigh in. Let’s look at the results. The question I asked was “When you see the name “Haslam” would you think that person is from the Middle East?” Nine people voted and 3 said “Yes” and the other 6 said “No”

I also remember as a kid when I would answer the phone and it was a telemarketer looking for my dad, they would usually get it right or pretty close and it wouldn’t sound like a name from the Middle East. Today though when I get those phone calls, it is always “Hass lam” as if from the Middle East. The point of this whole post is my theory that if 9/11 didn’t happen, people would be pronouncing my name correctly and not as if I was from Islam.

What do you think when you see or hear the name “Haslam?”