Carrie Lam is the Chief Executive of Hong Kong. She was named “Cheng Yuet-ngor” at birth. In skimming the article about her, I’m noticing other Hong Kong politicians with European-derived names.
What’s going on here? I figure there’s a straightforward answer involving Hong Kong culture, but I’m curious how it works. Is there anyone familiar with Hong Kong culture that can shed some light?
(If all you got is supposition, can you please hold off? I can speculate with the best of them, but am looking for information on the subject).
That is a great article. I have often asked my friends of East Asian backgrounds why they don’t keep their ethnic names like those of us with South Asian backgrounds are more likely to do.
It’s interesting, and I have in fact met a couple of these people who were tired of strangers butchering the pronunciation of their names (yet NB they didn’t introduce themselves other than by their given name), but how common is the nickname thing really (stats?) And how common are English nicknames versus Spanish, French, German, Russian, etc?
Interesting that they tend to refer to each other by relationships rather than given names. Just yesterday, prompted by a thread in CS, I watched the Netflix documentary “American Factory”, and found it odd that all of the Chinese workers referred to the factory owner as “Chairman”. I thought it made the owner seem a little pompous and self-important, but I guess it’s just another one of those odd cultural differences.
As a personal anecdote, it works the other way around too.
All my children have been studying Chinese since the start of primary school. As part of the process, they had Chinese names chosen for them by the teachers. These are thoughtfully-chosen, with a proper “generation” name (ie, shared between the siblings）and intended to be “keepers” - the Taller Girl has used hers three times now on various language study trips to China and Taiwan, and language places will ask “what’s your Chinese name?” with the default assumption that if you’re interested enough in China, you’ll quite likely have one.
They were gifted with the names “Sincere” , “Eloquent” and “Awesome” and their generation name is “Book” - which gets more and more collectively appropriate as the years go by.
I used to work with a guy from Hong Kong who chose “Eddy” as his American name. When his brother emigrated a few years later, he suggested his brother use “Edward” not realizing that Eddy was a diminutive of Edward.
Thanks–this is really interesting! However, I’m not sure it addresses this specific situation (it might, I’m not sure).
This article, and a lot of the responses, deals with the reasons that Chinese folks will often choose an American name when dealing with Americans. Does Carrie Lam only use this name when dealing with Westerners? When she’s communicating entirely within Hong Kong, does she go by Cheng Yuet-ngor, or by a different name?
If she does, then this article pretty well addresses the situation. But if she doesn’t–if, within Hong Kong, she’s known as Carrie Lam–then there’s still a cultural piece I’m missing.
I found this 2017 campaign page which says “about Carrie”, “Carrie” written that way in Latin script. On the home page you can see it says “Campaign Office of Carrie Lam”. Presumably this was all for HK consumption.
On the other hand, right above it it says “林鄭月娥”, so on the surface there is some inconsistency there.
I definitely know Hong Kongers who do not have a special name “for dealing with Westerners”, so I’m still wondering how common that is.
Another anecdote- it is not uncommon for people of Chinese descent* born in the US* to have a Western first name on the birth certificate and used for legal purposes and then a Chinese name used possibly within the family or in the Chinese community. My husband and my kids have English names on their birth certificates, but they also have Chinese names. I think that perhaps the choosing of Western names that have no relationship to Chinese names is because you cannot simply translate the names ( like an Italian Giuseppe can simply go by Joe or Joseph in the US) and there isn’t always a similar sounding name. A Wai Man might be Raymond, but that doesn’t work for every name.
And when my adult daughter took Cantonese classes, the students without a Chinese name were given one by the teacher.
I’m a white American, but my step mom was from Hong Kong, and moved here in 1990, when she was 30. Many of her siblings followed, and some have stayed permanently.
Everybody I met from Hong Kong had an American version of their Chinese name which served as their “middle” name - Mei Ling was Maggie; May Bo was Mable. She also had siblings who’s Chinese names I don’t recall, but were named Jason, Emily, and Raymond.
In the Chinese American community, these people tended to call each other by their American name when they were speaking English.
Even now, when I have native Chinese clients, they tend to go by an English name (e.g. Jack), which is confusing when official documents use actual given names.
ETA: I suspect that Hong Kongers call Carrie Lam by her Chinese name when speaking Chinese, but use the English name when speaking or writing in English.
I recall some comment once that tone is very important in the Chinese language and most Westerners have a real problem with that. Something pronounced with the same sounds but different intonation can mean something very different. In fact, one comment said this could be so confusing in Chinese (Mandarin?) that sometimes conversations can be very difficult to follow without knowing context to start. I imagine if you throw in accents it gets worse. (But then, not just Chinese - when I watched the movie Billy Elliot I had to turn on subtitles and Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels was equally confusing.)
That would be an English Language name, which is not all that surprising when you consider that English is an official language there, and half the population speaks it (and I’d be very surprised if that didn’t include everyone in government)
My experience working in China was that if a Chinese person was speaking in English, they used a Chinese person’s English name when speaking about him. It seemed like the English name was the English word for that person. It occurred even if two Chinese people were speaking in English. (When dealing with commercial software systems, lots of times there are object names, terms, and programming language that only exist in English. Some people will use mashed together languages, i.e. Chinglish, when discussing such systems. Others find it easier to just talk in English.)
Whether it’s an English name or an American name or a Western name or whatever, do reporters use this name in Chinese-language media?
If she goes by two different names depending on which language the communication’s in, I think my question is well-answered. If she doesn’t, then there’s still something I’m trying to figure out.