Say Your Name
By: Kai Chan
Tags: Names, Ethnicity, Asian American, Writing Prompts

Photo by Alex Moiseev on Unsplash

This is part of my experiment to write regularly and publish every day with the help of 365 Days of Writing Prompts. Today’s prompt: “Write about your first name: Are you named after someone or something? Are there any stories or associations attached to it? If you had the choice, would you rename yourself?”

If I had the choice? If I really had the choice, then I would not rename myself. I would have somehow arranged things to be right from the beginning so that there was no need to “rename” myself.

Everyone has at least two names. The first one, others call it the legal name, as if any other names are somehow illegal or illegitimate. Instead, I call it the DMV name. Why DMV? From my limited experience, they seem to be a leader, a bar-setter in impersonal communication. Suppose that one day you go to the DMV. You have tried to do the business by mail or on the Internet or through the Autoclub, but once in a while they make you appear in person at the DMV office, and this is one of those times. You show up. They slap a number on you and tell you to wait. You ask how long the wait will be and they look away while yelling “next!” An eternity later, they finally call your name. The friendly DMV worker looks at your paperwork only while pronouncing your name, almost certainly mispronouncing it. Do they look like they are in the slightest way interest in me — a human being that is more than a number? Nope. To be fair, the DMV is not the only entity who does this. Do you know who is cold like the DMV? My parents. Somehow, they insist on calling me by my DMV name every time, even though I am annoyed by that practice every time.

The second one, I call it the Facebook name. No, not “Mickey Mouse” or “Captain Awesome” or whatever people decide to make up when creating throwaway accounts. According to a help page on Facebook, they would like “everyone” to use “the name they go by in everyday life”. Sure, they love to contradict themselves, as shown in these two consecutive sentences on the help page: “The name on your profile should be the name that your friends call you in everyday life. This name should also appear on an ID or document from our ID list.” (What if one’s friends do not call them by the name on their ID, a very common situation?) And there is the whole controversy surrounding their weird “real name” policy, which has created trouble for native Americans among others. But I am not going into the details here.

Ideally, one’s DMV name and their Facebook name should be identical. In reality, they are not always identical. Furthermore, all names are not created equal. Some are lucky. For others (such as myself), their DMV name and their Facebook name do not match, and they are treated or mistreated often based on stereotypes and whatnot.

If you are a member of the Asian American community (like me), especially if you were born in Asia, chances are that you get a DMV name with some Asian origin instead of one with some European origin. No, they are not treated the same by society.

If your name is, say, “John”, practically nobody will even bring up the possibility of you needing a rename. Fine, if you are named “John”, maybe someone will write “Jon” and vice versa even though virtually nobody mispronounces your name. People named “Paul” or “George” do not even have that slight spelling variation issue. What if your name is “Jose” instead. Some people pronounce the “J” as “H” and some do not. That is about it. But what if your name is one of those Chinese names that get translated into English by pronunciation? Let the fun begin! More people will mispronounce it than not. You will hear more variations than you thought were possible. And the most fun part? The prevalent view in society is that it is your fault or your parents’ fault. It is not the fault of those who mispronounce your name. They are so right in pronouncing it that way. What else are they supposed to do? You can almost hear them whispering among themselves: Why do you have such a weird name? Why did your parents do this to you?

Too often, people do not even try to get your name right. There are restaurants and other services that insist on getting your name, as if creating a sense of friendliness instead of being just another business. But then, most of the time, they go ahead and write down a misspelled name or read back a mispronounced name. What is the point?

My Facebook name is basically a truncation of my DMV name. It just happens to be the name of a character of the famous fairy tale The Snow Queen, as well as a fairly common Danish name. It has only 3 letters. Even so, I have counted at least 6 variations of my name that people have made up. From my experience, most people do not bother with checking if they have got it right, so some of them keep addressing me by the wrong name. Trust me, it can be worst. I do not envy those with, for example, Indian names that are very long.

I have heard the common suggestions. Just change your name or adopt another name. Pick an “American” name. Make things easier for everyone. But why? Sure, “Western” names can have ambiguities and variations too. E.g. Megan vs. Meghan, Christine vs. Kristin, Gene vs. Jean, Michel (pronounced either “mic-kel” or “mi-shell”), Joan (pronounced “jone” or “jo-an”), etc. Then why the suggestion? Somehow people are more understanding and accommodating to “Western” names, and they do not do the same for “Asian” names. Why? I do not think there is a legitimate reason. There are illegitimate reasons that are not supposed to exist in an ideal world, but our world is not ideal.

Even for those willing to give in to the de-facto discrimination, adopting another name is not easy or smooth. Suppose you are a student who adopts an “American” name as your Facebook name. Unless it is also your DMV name, each class of each semester, the teacher is going to still call on your DMV name (and quite possibly mispronounced), and the burden is on you to convince everyone that you prefer to go by your Facebook name. Sure, in most cases, it is not impossible. In many cases, it can be quite easy. But every now and then, your DMV name still pops up somewhere, especially anything that has to do with your official records (e.g. grades). This is just one situation among many more: employment, mail, rental, etc.

What about changing one’s legal name to be the Facebook name? That has its own problem too. The paperwork and process of changing one’s legal name is a hassle, and the result might not be satisfying, especially when it is outside common cases like changing one’s last name as a result of a marriage. For example, many universities do not change the names on diplomas and transcripts even after a legal name change is in place. Not to mention that even after a legal name change, too many applications of all kinds still ask if one has used different names than the current legal name in the past.

On the other hand, those who suggest name changes often do so with gross insensitivity when names are such a serious matter (perhaps rightfully) in many cultures. Asians who ponder the act of changing one’s name are often stuck between a rock and a hard place. Sure, the American society wants them to go by some other names, but their tradition and their relatives (especially parents) can push back against changing, and therefore giving up in a sense, their original names. After all, there is a strongly-worshipped saying in Chinese that literally translates to: “One does not change their given name while walking, and one does not change their surnames while sitting.” Changing one’s name is associated with being shameful or having something to hide. Furthermore, one’s original name is often carefully chosen by their parents, even ancestors. It is thought of as a gift and a blessing from them, a symbol of extending the family tree. Some consider it a huge no-no to abandon such a gift.

I wish the world had less nonsense like this. I wish that all names were valued the same way regardless of their origins, pronunciations, etc. I wish I did not have to envy my friends of, say, European origins. But we do not live in that world. In this world, all I can do is shrug off and carry on even if it is the ten millionth time a barista writes down or yells out the wrong name.