Proper Grammar: Asian names and commas.

Not offended. Just frustrated. Mostly not from the thread, either. I’m sure.

No worries. I’ve only got another week or so left here in the Middle East, err Southwest Asia… then I’ll be back to my charming self, promise.

I suppose this is not a good time to point out that you misspelled Colombia earlier. :smiley:

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The proposed title was too long, Bear.

Gotcha covered on your grammar, however.

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Hey! I got “homogenous” right, though.

For comedy’s sake, I think it’s also worth mentioning MLB’s lack of a system. SUZUKI Ichiro has “Ichiro” on the back of his jersey, and MATSUZAKA Daisuke “Daisuke”. But MATSUI Hideki has “Matsui”.

No rhyme, no reason. They just use whatever and go with it.

Actually, it’s conventionally spelled ‘homogeneous’, though your mistake is common.

It’s not Asia = East/Southeast Asia. It’s Asian usually = from East/Southeast Asia. That’s why people use context. Just like American doesn’t exclusively refer to people from the continents of North and South America, or antisemitic applies to Jewish people rather than all Semitic peoples. In fact, most of the time, people neglect to use geographically accurate terms to describe other groups of people. Because Oriental is considered offensive(in the US), the less geographically accurate term Asian is used to describe the same group of people that was recently called Oriental.

Back to the OP; Surprisingly, I think we’ve gotten it right a couple times. We refer to Josef Stalin as Stalin and Mao Zedong as Mao.

I wasn’t gonna say!

It’s not a mistake. The conventions of language allow both spellings, though homogeneous is generally preferred.

There have been whole threads debating how offensive Oriental is. I never used to think it was. Granted, growing up in West Texas, you’d hear much worse terms, but when I lived in Hawaii, which has large Japanese, Chinese, Korean and Filipino populations, no one seemed to mind Oriental.

Add to the fact that in the UK, plain “asian” would refer to people from the Indian subcontinent.

Yes, it is. Also for Portuguese and Brazilian, who also have two surnames, who may or may not call themselves Hispanic (Portuguese usually don’t, many Brazilians do - remember that in Latin Hispania is the Iberian peninsula), and for whom the first surname is the matrilineal one.

Which, ironically, can cause confusion.

Oriental is a rug is something that started in Berkeley in the 1960’s, took on some momentum in the 1990’s. Oddly enough, seems like the Asians in Hawaii have no problem with using the term Oriental to describe themselves.

As to the OP, I usually capitalize the surname so it’s more clear.

And the vast majority are either Kim or “Park.”

But when a Korean introduces HERself in English, she’ll almost always offer an anglophone version of her name, the most popular of which is “Jenny.” Korean women seem to think that Americans are incapable of pronouncing their true names.

But then she gets married to Mr. Jones, and her name becomes Ma Lola Sanchez Garcia de Jones.

Stuff that in your database and smoke it.

hijack

Bolding mine - don’t take it personally, I can’t blame them myself. As the owner of a perfectly humdrum Welsh first name, chosen by the folks as being “easy to say and easy to spell” I can attest to how tiresome it can be constantly dealing with mis-pronunciation (& don’t let me start on spelling!). It must be nice to have a way out acceptable to both parties.

I mean, picture the scene - You “Hi, I’m Guizot” t’other person “Nice to meet you Guizoth”
A small difference true and Guizoth may be someone’s name but it is not your name. So what do you do ? Correct them on the spot and risk making your first impression one of someone who is pushy/picky/dislikeable whilst making the other person uncomfortable ? … or leave it and risk not only being called by the wrong name for the duration of your dealings with that person but also their passing thie wrong name on to others ? Choose a moment later to correct them and have them feel bad for getting it wrong for so long ? And what about those who pronounce it correctly about a third of the time when they remember to “make the effort” ?

Surely it’s better to be “Jenny” than “the Korean lass whose name I have to concentrate to get right” ?
/hijack

Americans ARE incapable of pronouncing Korean names. Particularly female names. I find the popular Korean male names are much easier for the average American than the female names. Even the relatively simple names like Kim Sun-Hee are shortened to bastardizations like “Sunny” to keep things short and sweet.

I always thought this was player’s choice – IIRC, Ichiro likes to go by his first name in baseball contexts because Suzuki is such a common Japanese surname.

EDIT: I wasn’t quite correct, but in the ballpark (yuk yuk). From Ichiro’s Wikipedia page:

Well, actually I can’t be sure how often it ever came up. It could very well simply be that after hearing all of the colorful terms for Asians by my compatriots in West Texas, Oriental seemed benign to say the least.

But then, you and I are Occidentals, are we not?