I've come across my fair share of slightly strange names in the past few months. By that, I don't mean Steven, Frank, Jason, Sharon. I mean names like Lester & Simon, stuff that's not really odd, but a little bit outside of the mainstream. I wonder how they come to pick their "Western" names. At first I thought, maybe it sounds a lot like their name in Chinese, but that's not the case, I checked the database, no resemblance, not even close.
I had a Ghanese friend who's name was "Harrison". When I asked about the origin, I had hoped to hear that his family had some link to someone in the UK with the surname, "Harrison" but my greatest fear was true: as a kid he watched Raiders of the Lost Ark and was instantly smitten by the hat and whip and decided he wanted to be known as Harrison. I met someone last week who had a coworker named "Maverick". I bet Maverick was 5 years older than Harrison. Nevertheless, Maverick is a pretty cool name. I really want to meet this guy; I wonder how much like his Top Gun namesake he actually is. I think I know the answer to that.
I've started to amass this inventory of stupid jokes that I tell to the Taiwanese to gauge whether or not they "get" my stupid sense of humor. We had the pleasure last week of meeting up with one of Shirley's former high school students from the States who is visiting her home in Taiwan. We were out with her and her brother and I thought I'd put my witty personality to the test. I guess under certain circumstances, Westerners here sometimes choose a Chinese name much like Maverick chose his Western name.
I explained that if given the chance, I would pick a name that means a lot to the Chinese people. I would name myself after the most famous Chinese hero, someone powerful and loved by the people, someone who personified Chinese culture and delivered it to the rest of the world. A name that would instantly bring me honor. My Chinese name will be "Bruce". Their puzzled response was, "But Bruce Lee's real name is Jun-Fan."
Tough crowd.
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In almost every class I've taught in Taiwan, there's some kid with a strange name. Tiger, Muscle, Kitty, Eagle...the list goes on. Last winter, I had a tough choice whether to let a student (or his parents) know about the unfortunate nature of his name - his name was KY. In the end, I couldn't bring myself to it. A couple of years ago, I had an employer called Tonic and his wife was Vidian (she had changed the "v" to a "d"). When asked how they chose their names, they replied that they wanted something out of the ordinary. This is very common over here, but it goes both ways - when I first arrived, I chose my Chinese name to be (as translated) "White Water Wave".
ReplyDeletekind of reminds me of this young man who hangs out where I work. The leader of his pack isn't nearly as reserved as most other Taiwanese that I have encountered here...at any rate they all want to practice their English with me and as we were doing the introductions and I was asking names I got your typical Joes and Johns but this one particular young man just froze then said something to his comrades in Chinese - they translated it to "he doesn't have an English name" - far be it from me to not seize an opportunity so if you ever encounter "Stroker Ace" you'll know where his name came from.
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