I’m not even sure how to phrase the question: I’ve worked with, for example, a Chinese woman, raised in the US, whose given name is Tsu-yun who goes by “Teresa”.
Is there a term for when someone takes a ‘common’ name that’s easier for the locals to remember/pronounce than their given name?
Years back I supervised the Asian Games pit in a Las Vegas casino with many dealers from various Asian cultures / countries. Some kept their Asian names and some chose an American name.
There was Rose, Simon, Eunice, Andy, and of course, Kim could go either way, and many others. Ping and Ting always kept original their names. Those were the names on their Sheriff’s Card (the Las Vegas permit for casino workers).
Lambo became a good friend I socialized with and I was surprised to learn that outside the casino he was known as Roy but was Lambo at home and at work.
I’ve generally heard Anglicization; but of course that only works when the culture being assimilated to uses names common in England. That’s what’s usually happened in the USA, though.
I was given an Anglicized form of my grandmother’s Yiddish name.
Similarly, people in Hollywood have “stage names” and of course, there are those “describe yourself” Facebook questionnaires that ask “what is your porn star name?”
Related to what Turble said above, whatever these names are called, you will also find that different folks will use them to different degrees. I have worked with many people from China over the years. On the one extreme, you have some people who have taken a Western name and use it in pretty much any English interaction. On the other extreme, I worked with a Chinese woman for a couple of years, and we once went out for coffee. I was surprised when they asked her name, and she replied “Lily”. I asked her about it and she said that she only used it in situations like this, one-time interactions where it was easier than using her given name, which was somewhat difficult to pronounce and spell for the average English speaker. But when she did use it, it was always “Lily”.
Its her pet name… she would probably call her pet that too. Or maybe it was her families nickname … from the time of being a young baby… not her school/college nickname. What her parents might still call her.
It doesn’t just have to be non-Westerners taking Western names; it can work the other way around as well.
I had a “local” name in Indonesia. My real name is hard for native Indonesian speakers to hear and pronounce, so I stopped using it in situations where there was no real need for my legal name. Instead, I became “Lisa,” which is simultaneously a plausible Western name and an easily understood name for Indonesians.
People in my inner circle knew that if some random person started talking to them about “Ibu Lisa” (“ibu” being the standard honorific), it was 90% certain that they were talking about CairoCarol.