Lyft informed me that my driver’s name was Eleni, and she would arrive in a white Toyota Corolla. A few minutes later, a white car pulled up to the curb. I waved to it.

The driver rolled down the window. “Christine?” she asked, in a hard-to-place accent.

“Yes,” I said, circling around to the other side of the car, “that’s me!”

At this point I probably should have asked, “Eleni?” in order to confirm the driver’s identity, but I realised I had no idea how to pronounce it.

Was it e-LAY-nee, like “Elaine” with an “ee” at the end? Or was it e-LEH-nee, like “uh Lenny”? Or could it even be ELL-en-ee, like “Ellen” with an “ee” at the end? I knew enough to recognise it as Greek, and probably the Greek form of Helen or Ellen, but that piece of trivia proved useless in helping me determine how to pronounce her name.

So instead I just glanced briefly at her face to see that it matched her profile in the app, opened the door, climbed into a back passenger seat, and said “Thank you!”

“229 West Broad Street?” she asked.

“Yes! Thank you so much,” I said, also neglecting to address her by name this time, as she began to drive us through a thicket of downtown streets. It would be a fifteen-minute drive. Silent.

I spent some minutes scrolling mindlessly through Instagram, but a low shame itched at me. The asymmetry of it. Eleni had no trouble pronouncing my name, so for me to deny her the dignity of hearing me say her name aloud may have been kind of insulting. It also didn’t help that she was most likely an immigrant, and I a fairly affluent native citizen, so there were uncomfortable social class issues lurking unspoken beneath the waters of our nonconversation. I resolved to give her her due respect at the end of the ride by saying “Thank you, Eleni!” when she dropped me off.

First I had to determine how to pronounce Eleni.

I considered asking her explicitly, but decided against it. Asking her explicitly would amount to an admission that I didn’t know how to pronounce her name in the first place, which would bring all the weird social class undercurrents into sharp relief. But more importantly, we were already ten minutes into the ride and the silence was now golden, a delicate oasis of thoughtful peace and focus that made any interjection of speech feel awkward.

So instead I pulled my phone out of my purse, dimmed the brightness, and Googled how to pronounce Eleni. A list of name pronunciation websites and videos populated my screen. I lodged my AirPods into my ears and tapped the first video.

“Eh-LEH-nee,” my phone said.

Out loud.

Shit.

Eleni turned her head briefly, but did not say anything. I closed Safari with a furious swipe and stifled my embarrassment as I remembered that my AirPods had run out of battery earlier in the day. We spent the last few minutes in an eternity of excruciating silence, as I began to sweat through my jacket.

At long last she pulled up near my home. “Drop you off here?”

“Yes,” I panted, “thank you so much, Eleni.” Then I disembarked and sprinted toward my doorstep.