'English' Names for Asian People

G

Gone To Texas

500+ Posts
One of my office-mates is from Korea. Apparently he is considering giving himself an "English" name, and he emailed me for advice. He had a few ideas (Daniel and Martin) and wanted to know whether these names were popular and what their "image" was in American culture.

I have a few Asian friends who have given themselves "English" names. I always though they did it to fit in. But the motivation in this particular case seems to be that my friend wants a name that has "meaning," since English speakers don't understand the meaning in his Korean name. I explained that English names don't really have meanings, so in that sense he's not missing out on anything! I also suggested that if he wants his name to have any real meaning, that he choose the name of a historical figure he admires.

Anyway, I found this interesting and wondered if anyone else on the board has ever selected a name for themselves and/or whether you have any advice. I guess there are a few obvious names to avoid, like Adolf (which is interesting since no one avoids, for example, the name "Joe" in light of Stalin).
 
went to grad school with a guy who chose "elvis". i thought he was bad *** for that. might as well go for the home run out of the gate.

my asian name is nok su kow which means "the white warrior"
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Do you work for Samsung? I've had this exact conversation with God knows how many Koreans here... I always just suggest something that is phonetically similar to their Korean name and they are content.
 
They pick names which sound like New England investment bankers or Wall Street lawyers. Maybe they should step out and choose a name which sounds like a rapper or an NBA player.
 
What I find strange is when a pinyin Chinese name is still pronounced differently than it's written. The whole point of the pinyin system was to transliterate the Chinese languages into English characters phonetically to allow Westerners to read and pronounce their names.
 
Knew one named Jose once. He quickly changed it to Bill. I got an Asian name that's easy to pronounce, to most peeps anyway.
 
One of my best friends from college (who is Indian) started using his first and middle initials because people in the business world couldn't properly pronounce his name (which I think is stupid because it's spelled just like it sounds).
 
I listened in on a conference call recently for the company I teach English to. The main office is in Miami, but they work with people around the US, Americas, and maybe Asia. We were on mute and I just listened to the conversation. They all are fairly educated programmers and/or business people.The first guy to report had a slight southern twang. I immediately called that he was from somewhere in the South. He even used "going off the 'reservation'". I loved that.

Second guy said about two sentences and I correctly identified him as being black.

Third person was very particular with his speech and after about 2 sentences I correctly identified him as being gay.

Fourth person took about the same number of words to be identified as hailing from New York. (Right again.)

Fifth person, KEVIN, said about one sentence and I said- "His name is NOT 'Kevin'." It turns out that he is Chinese and that no one could come close to his name, so the lady leading the conference call (American military brat who's half Asian, but not sure which) just said "You name is 'Kevin' from now on."

So maybe you should suggest Kevin.
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PS- My ability to identify accents in seconds seemed to impress my students as well as the owner of the company who lived in LA for about 4 years, but still couldn't pick up subtle accents.
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Every Asian in Hong Kong has an English name. Some of them are ephonetic - my fiance's name is Ka Man so her English name is Carmen.

You get some odd ones like Elvira (works with me) etc.

Also it's pretty cool - Westerners get to pick Chinese names and you can pick whatever you want.

The guy sitting across from me picked "Mighty Flying Dragon" which I thought was funny.
 
I used to work with a Vietnamese guy whose first name is Hung. It was always kind of awkward when he introduced himself to someone.
 
I'm American honey. Our names don't mean ****.

I have a Chinese friend who goes by Dog. He wanted to be named Doug but his Chinese English teacher couldn't pronounce it, so he just went with Dog. Now that's irony.
 
I haven't been in this situation before, but if you do suggest a name make sure it is something they can pronounce. I will alway remember when my first son was born, his "neighbor" in the NICU was a little Asian girl. The first time I was in there, her parents came in and kept calling her "Errie". It was very hard to understand and I kept thinking that was a very unique name. However, a short while after they left a nurse came over and called the little girl Ellie (which was correct according to the spelling). The Asian couple had given their little girl a name they couldn't even pronounce. I alway thought this was very weird and did find it pretty funny. To this day I still don't have a clue what they were thinking naming her that.
 
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