In my mind, it reads something like this:
“I am making the assertion that the variable name is bound to the value "José". If the variable name is not bound to any value, then name will get bound the value "José" and my assertion will be true. If name is bound to any value other than "José", then my assertion will be false.”
Oh, yes! You’re right. My brain relapsed to “Erlang-mode” when writing that 
Which is funny, because I just started a thread about this exact topic:
I say name is matched and assigned to “José”. Because if it’s not an existing variable, it’s assigned.
It makes more sense to me when pattern matching.
{:ok, name} = {:ok, "Jose"}