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A basic guide to using Asian names

asiamediacentre.org.nz

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Re: A basic guide to using Asian names

#111

Post by dehrmann »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #70
cat_plus_plus wrote: post #66

For whatever reason, my first name is almost universally mispronounced in America. So early on, I made a decision to let it go and in fact introduce myself by how most English speakers said it. No regrets whatsoever, any time spent sorting phonetics out is time wasted not getting to substance of the matter we want to discuss. I also suspect that if I made a stink about it, many people would avoid me because I have a…

It's a "pick your battles" kinda thing, you're not gonna get someone at Starbucks write your name down properly if it isn't something they can easily hear over the murmur of a crowd. That said, if I were in that situation I would double down on it in anything formal - documents, graduation ceremonies, weddings, lawsuits, etc.

I have a coworker named Domas. It's pronounceable enough, but he uses Thomas (which is actually just a variation of the same name in some cultures) as his Starbucks name for...reasons.

Re: A basic guide to using Asian names

#112

Post by itake »

Sometimes it's hard to know which Asian culture an Asian is from and under what system they are presenting their name.

A Vietnamese national working n the USA may say Thanh Nguyen (with Nguyen being their family name).

You basically have to memorize the top last names in every culture or just ask them what they want to be called.

Re: A basic guide to using Asian names

#113

Post by geraldwhen »

tkgally wrote: post #6

The guidance on Japanese names is a bit simplistic. Yes, the Japanese government has announced a surname-first policy, but Japanese people are not bound by that policy. I have hundreds of name cards ( meishi ) that I have received from Japanese businesspeople, academics, and government officials over the years, and my rough estimate is that more than half who indicated their name in English on the card put their surn…

Given names are only used in Japan in informal settings between people you know well, like friends and family. Work, school, and general life would use surname + honorific. The honorific is not optional.

Re: A basic guide to using Asian names

#114

Post by j16sdiz »

lanstin wrote: post #74
lanstin wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would also love to read, “cultural considerations in visiting Norman, Oklahoma” written for the South Asian audience. Or “how to manage your US born workers” for upper class Asians. “Getting along in the US suburbs for the shy Indian tech geek.” To the extent these things exist, they are not easily accessible to English only US born people. Actually, I have just found my next series of Chat GPT questions. That said…

GPT-4 said to study up on football, especially the Sooners, try the fried Okra, say please and thank you a lot, and get used to car dependence, vast empty spaces, extreme weather, confusing language styles of seeming friendly but not meaning it, and increased physical distance between even friends.

> study up on football

By "football", did you meant that hand-held oval-shaped thing?

Re: A basic guide to using Asian names

#115

Post by dehrmann »

mynameisamis wrote: post #107

I'm from Europe but lived in Singapore for 10 years and worked with people from all over. There were a lot of names that surprised me, like the occasional man with a female name. One was named Wendy, the other one I forgot. I think he was from the Philippines, or maybe Malaysia. Many Asian languages don't have male/female names, so when the parents want to pick a western name for their newborn they don't always consi…

Guessing these weren't native Singaporeans (where English is an official language and British influence is still obvious)?

There are also names like Leslie and Ashley that are more associated with women in the US, but have historically been gender-neutral.

Re: A basic guide to using Asian names

#116

Post by OfSanguineFire »

mynameisamis wrote: post #107

I'm from Europe but lived in Singapore for 10 years and worked with people from all over. There were a lot of names that surprised me, like the occasional man with a female name. One was named Wendy, the other one I forgot. I think he was from the Philippines, or maybe Malaysia. Many Asian languages don't have male/female names, so when the parents want to pick a western name for their newborn they don't always consi…

Someething similar to your “fake western names” has been a feature of Brazilian culture going at least back to the early 20th-century. A segment of Brazilians will give a child a name ending in “-son”,[0] even if it is invented out of whole cloth, just because an English sounding name sounds prestigious. A quick online search shows people disparaging this as a practice of the lower classes, but over the decades as some families have grown wealthier, this is widely found among the middle class, too.

[0] https://portuguese.stackexchange.com/questions/8634/what-is-...

Re: A basic guide to using Asian names

#117

Post by crossroadsguy »

cat_plus_plus wrote: post #66

For whatever reason, my first name is almost universally mispronounced in America. So early on, I made a decision to let it go and in fact introduce myself by how most English speakers said it. No regrets whatsoever, any time spent sorting phonetics out is time wasted not getting to substance of the matter we want to discuss. I also suspect that if I made a stink about it, many people would avoid me because I have a…

I don’t see any problem with what you choose to do.

Neither do I see a problem with someone who would want their name to be pronounced correctly.

Re: A basic guide to using Asian names

#118

Post by dehrmann »

tkgally wrote: post #6

The guidance on Japanese names is a bit simplistic. Yes, the Japanese government has announced a surname-first policy, but Japanese people are not bound by that policy. I have hundreds of name cards ( meishi ) that I have received from Japanese businesspeople, academics, and government officials over the years, and my rough estimate is that more than half who indicated their name in English on the card put their surn…

So when it's written in a English, write it English style? That's actually very reasonable, as long as Japanese publications write western names in the Japanese order.

Re: A basic guide to using Asian names

#119

Post by mynameisamis »

dehrmann wrote: post #115
mynameisamis wrote: post #107

I'm from Europe but lived in Singapore for 10 years and worked with people from all over. There were a lot of names that surprised me, like the occasional man with a female name. One was named Wendy, the other one I forgot. I think he was from the Philippines, or maybe Malaysia. Many Asian languages don't have male/female names, so when the parents want to pick a western name for their newborn they don't always consi…

Guessing these weren't native Singaporeans (where English is an official language and British influence is still obvious)? There are also names like Leslie and Ashley that are more associated with women in the US, but have historically been gender-neutral.

> Guessing these weren't native Singaporeans (where English is an official language and British influence is still obvious)?

Most of them were probably from other countries, but I know of at least one Singaporean lady with a fake western name. In her case the parents had arranged the syllables of her Chinese name into a European-sounding combination (quite clever IMHO and more authentic than a name from the "catalogue").

Re: A basic guide to using Asian names

#120

Post by OfSanguineFire »

notahacker wrote: post #99
JimDabell wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not exactly the same thing, but you might be interested in Passport to the Pub. It’s a description of British pub culture written for visitors. As a Brit it’s quite amusing to read about something that has seemed normal forever, only to realise that it’s quite mad at times. http://www.sirc.org/publik/pub.html

I'm also now imagining someone actually using this guide, walking into the sort of city centre gastropub popular with tourists, striding confidently past all the serving tables up to the bar, identifying a group of very drunk lads from out of town as "regulars" and trying to join in their banter, and then attempting to offer an even more confused Polish barman a drink...

Indeed. But beyond that, I first visited the UK in the late 1990s and found that a lot of the pub culture I had learned from 20th-century literature, film, or even supposedly contemporary episodes of Eastenders was already out of date. The merger of pubs into large chains, and the importance of serving food to ensure profitability, also came as big surprises. And by the first decade of the new millennium, it really did seem like every service staff I interacted with on brief forays to the UK was Polish, Lithuanian, or Latvian.
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