I’ve often wondered about the use of Anglo names by Asians and others who come from non-European backgrounds. Until fairly recently, it seemed that most Chinese immigrants to America used Anglo names. Nowadays it seems that this is becoming a bit less common, and we’re seeing more people keeping and using their Chinese names.
But all this got me wondering, how do people in this situation end up with the Anglo names that they might be using? Do they say to themselves, “I need to choose an Anglo name because my native name will be too hard to use in my new country”, or are some people given both an anglo name and a name that is more typical to their language, at birth? How about in Hong Kong, with its historical association with Great Britain? If choosing a name to use, does one try to find a name that’s vaguely similar to the original name, or is it more like carte blanche? How does one research what cultural associations a prospective name might have? For example, if it’s two brothers who have immigrated to America, do they have a way to find out that “Moe” and “Larry” might not be the best choice for them, unless they don’t mind a few people chuckling at their names?
Mrs. Kunilou’s family is Japanese-American, and the answer is purely assimilation.
Mrs. Kunilou’s grandparents were immigrants. Obviouly they had Japanese names. They also gave their children Japanese names.
In the next generation, things got split. The part of the family that remained on the West Coast, where there was a large Asian-American community, tended to give their children Japanese names. The part of the family that moved to the Midwest tended to give children Anglo names. Several of them also adopted Anglo nicknames.
And the next generation, the generation currently having children, is following suit, except that the ones who married Anglos are more likely to give their children western names, whether they’re on the West Coast or in the Midwest.
Of course, part of it is that Asian names get mangled by people who speak English, so the parents may have just said, “the hell with it, let’s call him Joe.”
A co-worker in the early 90s immigrated to the US from Taiwan. He kept his family name, but insisted that the immigration official gave him an English firstname on arrival. I never had the heart to point out to him that this particular given name, together with his fairly-common Chinese family name, was only a single consonant away from being identical to the title character of a popular American fairy tale.
Oh, I forgot to mention that his English given name did not sounds anything like his Chinese given name (which he told us when we asked), though I suppose there might have been a common meaning to them.
My coworkers here who are Chinese born in Vietnam have their chinese names, and then their American names that they go by here. But with their family they are likely to be called either one, and one of the girls i sometimes call by her chinese name just because it is shorter.
My Taiwanese friends at university all used English names. I asked one of them where he got it (Robin, in English) and he told me their English language teacher assigned one to each of the class and they just kept using it when in English speaking countries. I asked for his name in chinese and after about 15 minutes of trying to pronounce it without it meaning something else, I gave up and he decided Robing was just fine…
Most of the Chinese people I know and work with have adopted Western names, whereas most of the Vietnamese people have kept their original ones, although there are exceptions on both sides. I think this is because the Vietnamese generally arrived in Australia later, and attitudes had begun to change here.
The Chinese, for some reason, tend to pick “classic” or old-fashioned names: James; William; Joy; Mary; etc.
Many of the Vietnamese who kept their original names have been able to do so because they’ve reached a sort of “truce” with the English-speakers whereby we endeavour to mangle their names only slightly, and they answer to the slightly mangled name without complaint. A typical case is the Vietnamese surname “Nguyen”. To pronounce it properly will take a non-Vietnamese person a bit of effort, so an unspoken agreement was reached (in my workplace, anyway): the Vietnamese will understand us when we pronounce it “nwin” or even “win” (which are close, but not correct) because at least we’re trying, in return for which we promise not to pronounce it “New-En” like most Aussies used to.
There are other ways the names issue is tackled. My girlfriend’s given name is “Kim Phuong”. As Vietnamese family names come first, “Kim” becomes her middle name, and “Phuong” the name she is called day to day by other Vietnamese. “Phuong” being a little bit tricky for Westerners, she goes by “Kim” now, as it’s an easy cross-cultural name. She even goes as far as “Kimmy” which is definitely westernised, but is still her proper name.
From what I know of Taiwan, it seems that almost everyone there has an Anglicized nickname. My Taiwanese friend and her brother were given theirs at birth by their mother (a professor of English literature). I think it is more common for people to pick up a name in English class, or select the name of a Western celebrity or fictional character. My friend once mentioned that one of her old classmates called herself Julia because Pretty Woman was her favorite movie.
A friend of my sister’s, who is Chinese, has a rather unusual “American” name. It is not a traditional Western name at all, but rather a variant on her Chinese name that her parents made up for her when they came to the US. They apparently thought it sounded like a good American name that would be easy for Westerners to pronounce. The latter is true enough, but if they were hoping to give her a name that would allow her to blend in they failed – I believe she is the only person on Earth ever to have this particular name!
I myself ended up rechristening my roomate’s sister when she came over from China. My roommate kept her Chinese first name–Wei–because it was easy for Americans to pronouce. But her sister was Zhang, sounding something like John, and I ended up calling her Jane, which it also sounded something like. So she introduces herself now as Jane Deng. I got the impression it wasn’t that big a deal to her–she knows who she really is and would just rather not go through life here spelling out her first name to all and sundry.
What was funny was that, when speaking Mandarin to each other, the sisters called each other Deng Wei and Deng Zhang, not just the first names.
I have a co-worker who uses a western name because she feels that her name would be too hard for us to pronounce properly - and it is. It;s not a terrinl;y difficult name, but just the stresses on the syllables are wrong to her ears when we say it, so she prefers the name her English teacher chose for her. She says that Chinese names don’t really have meaning in the same way as western ones do. She goes by the name Rose, but her chinese name doesn’t MEAN rose, or anything else, really.
Most Chineses who have European names also have Chinese names, just that you may not know what they are. Chinese names do have meanings, anybody who tells you they don’t does not understand the language at all well.
An interesting contrast is a lot of Westerners working in China or Hong Kong have adopted Chinese names.
