It’s also possible that the name on his birth certificate is “Michael” and everyone including his family calls him that and the Chinese name is only used at formal occasions like weddings , much like it’s not uncommon for a Jewish person to have a Hebrew name that is only used for religious purposes.
I suspect you’re thinking of American-born people of Chinese origin, who quite conceivably might have been named Michael on their birth certificates. While I’ve been talking about “immigrants from China”, who were born in China and may speak English with heavy accents. It’s extremely unlikely that such people were named Michael at birth. The only question was whether they changed their legal names later in America, but that’s not commonly the case. (My wife once worked in an office where she was familiar with paycheck info, and many of the Chinese people working there had their checks made out to Chinese names which they did not at all use in any other context.)
You’re right - I am. But I didn’t realize you were talking about “immigrants from China” , probably because most of those that I know don’t use English names for anything. In fact, I was wondering if the difference between those of Chinese descent and those of Indian descent was related to immigration history more than culture- but I guess not.
AIUI, it’s generally a desire to assimilate. The Chinese kids get names like Kevin, Jason, Amy (super-common Chinese-American names) so they fit in better. The Indian parents, on the other hand, may deliberately want their kids to stand out.
Getting the tones correct for a Chinese name would be a challenge for many Anglophones.
I was going to post that as well. Speakers of atonal languages often don’t realize how important the tones are.
In mine experience, immigrants from Hong Kong and Taiwan use English names for daily use more often than immigrants from mainland China.
Those are just the simple examples. Much more difficult ones would be ones with Q (Anqi is pronounced “An-chee,”) or Fan/Fang (the latter is like “fong,”) or when consonants or vowels are blended together and it’s hard for an American to recognize where they are split - Meiou is “may-oh”, not “meow” as some mistake it,) Bangguo is “bong-guo,” not “bong-oh,” and when “ui” is “ee” (such as Korean shooter at Virginia Tech, Cho Seung-Hui, pronounced “jo-sun-hee.”)
Anglophones don’t get Indian names exactly correct either. Vowel tones might be a problem for Chinese, but Anglophones can’t distinguish tons of Indian consonants (gemination, dental-palatal, aspirated-unaspirated, etc.). And yes, lots of “mistakes” can change meaning.
But so what? We don’t expect people from different language backgrounds to get our names exactly right. Close enough is good enough. Why isn’t that the case for Chinese names? After all, in most contexts we are talking about, we aren’t speaking Chinese. And in any case, if we were all speaking Chinese, you would expect Chinese-as-a-second-language speakers to have poor pronunciation.
Maybe that’s the difference: South Asia is so diverse linguistically that we are used to the idea of being surrounded by people who pronounce things differently or “wrong.” Could it be that Chinese people can’t tolerate bad accents/pronuncations?
Again, so what? I don’t expect anyone but fellow Bengalis to pronounce my name exactly right. That doesn’t stop me from using it or wishing I had a European name.
I’m not sure it is true Chinese cannot tolerate bad pronounciations or accents. In addition to Mandarin and Cantonese there are many regional languages and dialects. Of course, tones matter, but I think there is some wiggle room, and I don’t think it is unusual for a Chinese person to hear someone speaking quite differently from the way they speak while still understanding the gist. I’m no expert - correct me if this is mistaken.
That’s great that you don’t feel that way- but I know more than one person with a European name who dislikes their name for no other reason than that people invariably choose the wrong way to pronounce their name and some of them go by “Debbie” instead of “Deborah” or “Andi” instead of Andrea for exactly this reason - no one mispronounces “Debbie” or “Andi”* , but in my dialect/accent , Deborah and Andrea each have at least three different pronunciations. Given that, it doesn’t really surprise me that someone with a non-European name might prefer to go by some sort of nickname rather than having their name mispronounced.
- although the nicknames might be misspelled.
Sure, but if I make an unreasonable (to you) request, and your response is to physically show discomfort (cringing, looking sideways) while using evasive language but you never say the word “no” in reply then that is precisely the same as not saying “no.”
You may be trying to convey the message of “no” but you aren’t saying it. That’s the gist of the American complaint, as literal as it sounds: that there’s this whole song and dance and nuanced gestures instead of a single, straightforward and unambiguous syllable.
On what cultural experience of Micronesian-American interactions are you basing this assertion?
It was always the newcomers/culturally insensitive Americans who complained. Those who’d been around a while and actually taken the time to observe and learn did not make that complaint.
Look at it this way: if you ask me a question and I don’t vocalize “no!” but I shake my head, you’ll understand that I just said “no,” will you not?
I used to have a boss from India whose first name was Boverianda. We all knew what it was, but he always went by his family nickname – Ragu.
I also had a Chinese co-worker whose English name was Eddy. He had a brother whose English name was Edward. They laughed about it once they realized it was versions of the same name. But they kept those names because people had gotten used to them.
I knew another kid from Hong Kong who I first met as Charles. A few years later he went back to Chung, his original name. I don’t think he had a problem with anyone pronouncing it a little bit wrong. But he was really happy to have people calling him by his ‘real’ name.
All the Chinese migrants I knew 30 years ago used Western names that they had chosen or been given when learning English in China, Taiwan, or refuge camps. Many, while living in Australia, have since reverted to a version of their Chinese given name.
What a weird sensitivity. People should recognize that other people pronounce things differently, especially people who come from different language backgrounds. Heck, your next-door neighbor might pronounce things differently for various reasons.
One difference I noticed yesterday.
I learned yet another Mandarin word for work hard, and decided to enumerate them.
I found so far: 费劲，努力，奋力，苦功，通力，全力以赴，铆劲儿，用功，操劳，斗争，极力，力求，着力，发奋，费神，竭尽全力，鞠躬尽瘁，力争，苦干，正气，辛劳，劳碌，打拼，吃苦耐劳，夙兴夜寐，奋发图强，暋作，酷刑故意，辛勤，做尽，使劲儿 and 奋斗 … 32 words.
You can see a different emphasis on the nature of work/study in the language itself.
Details: This is just a list of verbs and adverbs, and I've tried to only include words that have a positive or neutral connotation. I believe that all of these are in modern use, although there are a couple I am unsure of. Some of the words are somewhat context-specific, such as meaning "study hard", say, but they are still discrete words, not just a "study-" prefix put in front of a word that alone would already mean "work hard".Or maybe they’re super-tolerant to the degree that they’re perfectly willing to hear a name like Chuanxing pronounced as “Bob”.
For what it’s worth, I have many Chinese immigrants as co-workers and I think the trend among younger people is to use their Chinese name as their professional name.
Re: Asians adopting Western first names. Thai names can be daunting for Westerners. One of the wife’s cousins spent a few weeks in Chicago on some sort of program. She chose “Lucy” for her first name.
The name thing can work both ways. My name is difficult for Indonesians to hear correctly, much less pronounce. So while living in Indonesia I often went by “Lisa” because that’s easy for native Indonesian speakers to hear and repeat, at the same time it seemed like a reasonable name for an American woman.
“Lisa” ordered all my pizzas in Jakarta, among other things.