One thing I've always wondered is how much if any awareness expats have of western last names. For instance, not to imply names matter, but the most famous person who shares my last name was a boxer. Great man, but he wasn't famous for being an Isaac Newton. So I'd hope no one would look at my name and think, oh she must be the kind of person who's really good at using her body rather than her brain. My experience with American culture is we only really focus on the positive aspects of names. Like if you're having a conversation with a Vanderbilt or a Rothschild it's hard to not notice that, but there's really not much awareness in terms of negative associations with names, since everyone deserves a shot, and since everyone's looking for their shot, it's the folks with prolific names who'd be more likely to conceal them.
This isn't a good signal imo. The world is undergoing a lot of cultural mixing at the moment so making the assumption that someones last name indicates their cultural participation is a dangerous one. For instance, I have a very French name but I also have near zero French cultural implications.
I experience the opposite. I have the Irish name 'Cathal' which isn't very well known outside of Ireland. I've spent the past year in the US and every time I'm introducing myself to someone I hesitate and mentally prepare for the 'wait what?' after I tell them my name.
It's common here for restaurants and cafes to ask for your name when ordering, and often I'll make up a more common name for myself to avoid the hassle spelling out and explaining 'Cathal' to the cashier.
Having a unique name does however create an interesting talking point when talking to a new person, and it seamlessly opens up a discussion about my background and origins after introducing myself.
Given names is one of the most effective way to encode culture. We already know that individuals harbor some biases based on culture, so it's no surprise that there is some bias when people exchange names.
My mother explicitly gave me a "white sounding" name when I was born and in my experience changing your name is one of the most common ways that those from other cultures try to integrate in America and minimize bias.
There are many people in my corporation that are South East Asian but go anglicized names like: John, Kevin and Mary. They usually keep the family name though.
Especially the American name thing. You can only know the disadvantages of having a non-western name if you've actually used one. There's a reason why so many ethnic (particularly Asian, from what I understand) lawyers use American "professional names".
Also, many people have trouble pronouncing foreign names particularly those that don't come from an english background. Much easier to give your western name than watch someone mangle pronouncing your name several times and still get it wrong.
AFAIK it might be more common than you think. I have a female friend who's firstname is Fanny and another one who's lastname is Cocq. They both expect a few laugh when they introduce themselves in english speaking countries.
best thing my immigrant parents ever did was gave me a super-generic sounding anglo first and last name. if anyone asks (they almost never do), i just tell them i was adopted. people discriminate based on name, that's a cold hard fact.
it's a very common first name, and a very short ambiguous and non-descript last name. it connotates absolutely nothing other than i am probably an american that speaks english.
I actually think I've benefited from the reverse. I have a very Asian sounding last name (spelled completely different though) despite being of Russian-Dutch-English descent.
I've noticed in the age of remote work some people seem suprised when they first see me. I am now wondering if I am benefiting from the opposite problem of people correlating me with Asian stereotypes?
This was also my immediate thought. Naming is hard. Globally unique names that actually convey something about what you do, are recognizable, and sound pleasant to speakers of most languages seems even harder.
I have an Anglo-Saxon surname, but it's rare and very difficult for people here in SE Asia to pronounce, so I use a simpler, shorter, one-syllable last name when I'm here. This used to be a common thing that people would do internationally, even non-famous people like me. Some native English speakers back home might think I'm doing it for subversive reasons, but it's actually to make things easier for the natives here to say, spell, and remember.
yeah, when you say it like that it does seem consistent across cultures. the main thing for me is that I am unfamiliar with the connotations behind different last names in India, and I also cannot tell Indian subcultures apart visually if there are more nuanced ethnicities but I am becoming aware that this level of nuance is also at play
To add some color to this, if it's a common name it's really hard to remember but if it's a foreign name to me or something I've never heard of, it's as if my brain thinks it's a random sequence of sounds and I'll remember it forever. Indian names, native Hawaiian names, no problem, but forget about it if your name is George. It's just the common names I'm used to that I have a hard time with.
Actual scenario that happened to me: had an asian-american colleague whose first name was a generic western name, while his last name was german (due to someone on his dad's side of the family being german).
As a Bilingual person, the biggest thing I care about is a name that is in my language/culture but is easily pronounceable by others who have never heard of that name. Nothing wrong if it is tough to pronounce of course but as an American Citizen (Indian Origin), my wife and I named our kids keeping that in mind and we have a 95% success rate :) where non Indians can still pronounce it correctly.
That would have been considered disrespectful in my company, and to me personally
Me, I quickly realized it was about picking my battles. I could fight every day I lived in England to get people to pronounce it correctly or I could accept a reasonable best effort approximation and move on with my life. I found that most expats/immigrants with strange names took the same approach. These days when I'm in England or North America I've even started to pronounce my own name slightly wrong to speed up the whole process. Hell some people I know even preemptively changed their names to something easier to save everybody the effort.
Mispronunciations where (almost) never due to malice and my friends converged on a good pronunciation fairly quickly, and that was good enough for me. Spending a few years of your youth with most people getting you name wrong quickly desensitizes you to such minor details.
It's impossible for an English speaker to pronounce my last name, whether they heard it before or not. Heck, I can't even pronounce it myself without falling back into German speech mode.
But what's more important: it really doesn't matter to me how you pronounce it. Do people care about it that much?
As a native Chinese speaker, I find several points in the article a bit awkward to comprehend, especially when you flip the table around. It might be likely less than sophisticated for Françoise Duchamps to call herself Fran Swazzy in English (I don’t think so), but I struggle to think she’d have trouble using simply “Frances” without a last name if she goes to a hypothetical English-speaking place where residents don’t understand much French.
I also don’t understand the author’s lack of love to just using the straight phonetic translation (either first-last or only first/last name).[1] Sure it’s nice to have a Chinese name that sounds familiar, but would you expect your (say) Indian immigrant colleague to adapt an English-sounding name when moving to Canada? Yeah, we don’t mind you using your native name either.
Oh and the semantics don’t matter either. Lietarally zero native Chinese speaker would read ??? and think “huh, hope pull inside, wierd name”, we recognise immediately it’s foreign, just like you know Kazuhiko and Jinping don’t have Bible reference. Heck, we don’t even think too much about meanings of our own names that often. When’s the last time you see a guy named Chris and think how he bears Christ?
Anyway. I don’t dislike the article, especially the latter part where the author digs into actual examples. It is always a fun exercise to read Chinese names, I do that a lot as well. But it’s just that, fun exercise. That’s not how we read names in daily life, and as long as you’re happy with your Chinese-character-spelled names (be it Chinese-style or otherwise), we are happy to use it. Over-interpreting people’s names (especially non-native speakers’), now that’s unsophisticated.
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[1]: I am Taiwanese, so maybe there’s some cultral different to communities with China origin.
I am E/F bilingual. I taught in an educational institution which is multicultural with dozens of cultural origins. When I get names wrong, I see grimaces on their faces. When I hear other people get common but foreign names -- like Nguyen for instance -- wrong, I grimace too. I am now at an institution in a country where basically no one outside the country knows how to pronounce anything.
It takes me about 5 minutes to Google names I'm unfamiliar with before I start a new class to make sure I get it right. I don't know and I should not be expected to know Chinese, but I think I should be expected to be polite enough to try to get it right before I take a stab and butcher someone's name.
I don't think it is an enormous burden to put on myself, and I don't think I'm performatively self-flagellating by doing it. I think it's just me trying to be polite. I think everyone should try to be polite in as many contexts as possible.
On another context of names:
My own names are Hebrew and Germanic respectively, two syllables each. My given name is common in North America. Most people pronounce it wrong anyway. I would greatly prefer if they didn't. It's a little disrespectful. I politely correct people and then find most of the same people make the same mistake again and again. I find it disrespectful, the same way I find it disrespectful if someone spells my name wrong even though my email address is first@last. It's not because they're frothing at the mouth racists, it's because they're minorly inconsiderate.
My wife has a common name with two English spellings (let's say similar to Meghan/Megan). People frequently misspell it. She's not bothered by people guessing wrong. She is bothered when she corrects them and they still get it wrong. When I met her, it's not like I cosmically knew which of the two spellings was correct. I simply learned which of the two spellings was correct. It was a basic act of politeness and care. When people don't do it, it comes off like they don't care.
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