The episode could be chalked up to three lesser-known women shading the famous new girlfriend, but it cut deeper.

A minor controversary surrounding a trio of so-called industry insiders and the Htown Hottie has me thinking about names, and their meaning in our culture.

A clip recently surfaced of the insiders — three attractive white women in their early 30s and late 20s who I still don’t know from a hill of beans — pretending to be unfamiliar with Megan Thee Stallion, an attractive Black woman in their age group with body-ody-ody-ody-ody-ody-ody-ody.

How oddy-oddy-oddy.

Few pop culture consumers — “industry insiders” in particular — don’t know the “Savage” rapper and “Mean Girls” actress.

Thee Stallion has appeared on numerous “industry” TV shows, sold millions of industry records, dominated both social and traditional media industries and won three Grammys handed out by the music industry.

Who exactly is Mag?

The fake confusion expressed on the “3 Girls 1 Kitchen” YouTube show was so deep and obtuse that one of the women — Olivia Davis, the ex-girlfriend of Megan Thee Stallion’s rumored boyfriend NBA player Torrey Craig — forgot how to pronounce the name “Megan.”

“Do I start with the one where my ex is dating the Magan Thee Stallion? Mag Thee Stallion? What’s her name?” Davis said.

The name thing had me cringing harder than when Davis’ co-host questioned how Craig could date Davis and other girls of her “type” and be attracted to Megan.

The episode could be chalked up to three lesser-known women shading the famous new girlfriend, but it cut deeper than that, which is why the controversy has gotten so much attention on social media and beyond.

What’s in thee name?

Names are part of one’s identity, heritage and history.

It’s why we know who begot who in the Bible, and why my father named me Amelia in honor of his aunt Amelia. It is why Ancestry.com alone has more than 3.5 million subscribers, stringing names together to paint a family portrait.

It’s why it is so painful that my ancestors are listed only as “male negro” or “female negro” in old U.S. Census records.

The names of an estimated 10 million enslaved people of African descent were lost to history.

Their names are erased. Their humanity caged.

Shady Olivia explained that she got Megan’s name wrong because she always gets her vowels mixed up.

Names are more than a collection of vowels and consonants, which is why I’ve gotten so worked up in my career about saying them correctly. When I don’t, I remain embarrassed long after I say I am sorry, and the person behind the botched name gives me a pass.

It’s one thing to accidentally mispronounce someone’s name. It is beyond disrespectful to do it intentionally, or to not at least try.

This kind of disrespect of Black women and their names seen was most dramatically when President-elect Donald Trump made mispronouncing Vice President Kamala Harris’ first name a slur at his campaign rallies.

It was the kind of disrespect a friend of a friend expressed when her physically disabled son was asked to correctly pronounce the name of his caretaker: “I can see if the name was normal, but it’s Shenika,” the white woman grumbled to the mutual friend.

In this woman’s world, it is OK for Shenika to care for this woman’s child day in and day out but not for him to say her name correctly even though there no reason he can’t.

Riiight.

“She-ne-ka” is not as common as Megan, but it is not hard to say or obscure. Pronouncing someone’s name correctly — or at least attempting to do so — is the very least one can do out of human respect.

How ‘white’ is my first name?

When I was in the third grade, a little white girl in my class spit on me from a school bus window, and told me to go back to Africa with my African name — Amelia.

I will never 100% know why my 9-year-old classmate thought my name was African, or where in Africa she thought I should go, seeing this daughter of the Middle Passage who was born and raised in Cleveland.

I suspected, now, she was raised to think of Black people as monolithic aliens.

The little Amelia she spit on couldn’t possibly be anything but other. My name couldn’t possibly be regular.

This brings us back to Megan Thee Stallion, and her trio of haters. Of course they knew her name was Megan. And, of course, disrespect, intentional or not, was the goal.

Megans come in all skin colors but Megan — “pearl” in Welsh — is among the whitest names that ever named.

As the owner of a so-called “vintage” name like Olivia of Latin origin I know.

My name’s Germanic root, “Amal,” means “work.”

According to Parents.com, my name’s diminutive forms include Amy, Emma and Emily, and there are variation of my name in Italian (Amelita), Czech (Amalia), German and French (Amelie), Spanish (Nuela) and other European tongues.

Still, Amelia, the nation’s fourth most popular girl’s name in both 2022 and 2023, according to the Social Security Administration, has stumped people when it is attached to this Black woman.

It is possible to honestly mispronounce any name but “ə-MEE-lee-ə” has also been twisted and turned into the most elaborate shapes, consciously and subconsciously, due to sheer ignorance implanted in the brain.

That ignorance is understandable in a world where Megans, Shenikas and Amelias can’t be judged by the content of their character, because far too many people refuse to see anything but the color of our skin.

Understandable, but not justified. Terrible, but not enough to stop a hot girl from hotting.

 Megan will be fine.

She’s a stallion who will out fox ignorance. How sad it is that she and other Black women have to.