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Why I Don't Have an English Name I just found this blog by accident and have to commend Wang Jian Shuo on his excellent source of inspiration and information. Bravo! Ok, all kiss-ass aside, I can give my 2 cents. Regarding bigbro's posting on Aug. 10, 2004 1:55 PM: a teacher of mine in university often had this problem with her name Xing Zhi Qun. She took the English given name of Janet, and kept her family name of Xing, but found that even this was difficult for some people as she often received mail addressed to Janet Crossing! I have a similar, but much less funny problem with both my Chinese and English given names. People translate from pinyin "ma ling" to English, and they come up with all kinds of crazy things: Mali (African country), Malin (way too close to "malign," which they also sometimes use), Marlin (a kind of fish), and on and on...not to mention the "better" guesses of Mary, Molly, and Marlene. In Chinese, the same problem arises: I get names like 马铃（薯）- potato，马林 - an Olympic table tennis player (a man), and 马力 - horsepower to name a few. I heartily agree with bigbro's other post on Aug. 12, 2004 2:25 PM that says: "Everyone considers it a serious matter of respect to be able to write a friend’s name correctly." If this is true, then I have a lot of friends that really don't respect me at all! :) The problem is, my name in both languages is rather unusual and people have real trouble dealing with names that don't "fit into the mold." This might be one of the reasons Chinese people and foreigners in China prefer to have a name in the other language. To help avoid having people get it wrong, to ease in remembering it, and to help make one more easily identifiable to people that speak other languages. |