I know that many Chinese adopt English names that they use when in the company of English speakers, or when traveling or living in English-speaking countries.
On the message board that I run, I noticed that about a third of all women that register from China claim “Alice” as their first name. Why would the name “Alice” be so popular among Chinese?
Lots of views, and no response. A bump, because it’s scrolling off the page.
From my somewhat extensive experience with Chinese-Americans I have known as a programmer, it does seem that they have tended to use very old fashioned, in some cases almost Victorian English names in the context described by the OP. Just thinking of Chinese-American female IT people I have known, there were
Amy
Rosanna
Carol
Stella
Donna
These folks were all immigrants, rather than being the children or descendants of immigrants. FWIW, the name Alice does seem to be another typical ‘old fashioned’ female name. My two grandmothers, born in 1896 and 1888 were Stella and Alice respectively.
From what I’ve seen, during the early Victorian period in the U.S. there seems to have been quite a vogue for Spanish first names. You can’t read very far into U.S. history of the period before you run into names like Fernando Wood. And names like Juanita seem to have been popular for girls. If that aspect of 19th century naming customs hadn’t been mostly forgotten, we might see names like Esteban Chen and Juanita Ho.
Asian students who take English names usually take them from textbooks and such. Most of my ESL students back in the day were named Mary. (Either that or they’d ask the teachers for name suggestions - I amused myself once by calling these two girls Ashlee and Jessica because they reminded me of the Simpson sisters.)
my wad, common english name and first on the list since it starts with ‘A’
My experience is that the English name often phonetically resembles the Chinese name. My pinyin is terrible, but hopefully these examples will illustrate what I mean.
Kai Shen Cheng ==> Catherine Cheng
Wee La Lee ==> Vera Lee
Chu Fei Choi ==> Charlie Choi
So could it be that there are many Chinese names that sound like Alice, thus making it a popular choice for an anglicised first name?
For what it’s worth I only know one Chinese Alice. I know another lady whose Chinese names sounds like Alice (Ah Li) but she goes by Ally.
Because someone in the family already had “Grace”.
Perhaps Wonderland and Through The Looking Glass translated well into Chinese?
I remember a guy in my graduating class who was from Taiwan. I assume he got sick of people butchering his real name, so he picked an “English” name:
“Clement”
:rolleyes:
I still called him by his real name.