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American Sign Language Name Sign for Vice President Kamala Harris


Kamala Harris receives an American Sign Language sign name after she was elected as president Joe Biden’s vice president. She is an American politician as well as attorney who's the 49th vice president of the United States. She is the first female vp and the highest-ranking female official in the history of US, as well as the first African American and 1st Asian American vice president.


VP Harris' name sign was created by a group of Black and Indian Deaf women, Smita Kothari, Ebony Gooden, Kavita Pipalia, and Candace Jones, who worked with one another for a couple of weeks. This particular women’s group worked collaboratively to create a list of possible sign names then sent out a public survey to the Deaf community at large to collect their votes from February 1 to 5, 2021.



The Value of Name Sign


Deaf culture consists of several valued traditional aspects which are vital to the Deaf community, and one of them is the “name sign.” A name sign is a sign that's exclusively given to the individual, and it is frequently created based on the person’s qualities, personality, hobbies, and so on, which uniquely and distinctively identify a person. A name sign takes on an important part in identifying who exactly the individual is and their personal identity.


This tradition of Deaf individuals giving individuals outside of the Deaf community their name signs closely resembles Native Americans giving names to honorary members from outside their tribe.


Name signs can be made in 2 ways. One way is descriptive, which means that the name sign is dependent on physical aspect, occupation, behavior, the same sound of the person’s name, or other unique qualities. The other way is actually combined with descriptive, meaning the name sign starts off with the first letter of the individual's name, followed by a description of the person’s unique attribute.

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