When our daughter was born, we decided that she would call me aita, and she does, which I think is supercool. It sometimes causes a bit of confusion, as some of her friends think that’s my actual name, it being so foreign to their ears. But I wouldn’t give it up for the world.

However, when you search for “aita” in Google, the first thing that comes up has nothing to do with your dad, or my dad, or indeed anyone’s dad, in Basque or otherwise. Instead, it is a subreddit for people to get opinions on conflicts they’ve been part of. How does this relate to aita? Well, the subreddit is called r/AmITheA$$hole. The whole point of the subreddit is for people to ask AITA for some scenario. That is, were they the bad guy in that situation, or was the other person? Or was no one? Or everyone?

As one example, here is a post that is Basque related:

A friend of a friend is a wildlife educator who leads animal tracking trips. On one such trip (I paid him like any other client of his) we were on a long hike where we shared family stories. I mentioned my Korean heritage, and he mentioned that his father’s paternal grandfather had emigrated from the Basque region of Spain. Later that weekend, I made a passing reference to his “Spanish ancestry”and he quickly corrected me that he’s Basque and proceeded to lecture me on why I should never confuse the two identities. He acted offended and it all felt kinda finger-waggy. I still apologized, to which he responded, “it would be like if I called you Japanese instead of Korean.” To which I said, “it’s not like that at all. And I’d prefer to be called American, because I was born here.” Frankly, I was annoyed that this white man felt entitled to draw equivalencies to my identity. Whereas my lived experience with immigrant parents included overt racism and othering, his loudly calling out his great-grandfather’s origin is an entirely elective source of pride — which I don’t begrudge him at all; it simply explains my irritation in this context. My view is, I’m paying him to educate me about birds and animals, not identity politics. Still, I decided to stay pleasant and changed the subject back to wildlife questions. But he was clearly pissed about my earlier comment and gave me the cold shoulder for the rest of the trip. AITA?

(The point in sharing this isn’t to judge the original poster, but to give an example of the kind of queries that are asked in this subreddit.)

That’s not the only meaning of aita. It can also refer to a Bedouin musical style, a river in Romania, a dialect of the Rotokas language, or even the All India Tennis Association. However, I suspect it will end up meaning AmITheA$$hole to most non-Basques…