In my on-campus courses, approximately 80% of the students are Chinese. For context, perhaps half of that cohort did their undergraduate degrees in China, and the other half came to the States or some other English-speaking locale (Canada, UK, or Australia) for their Bachelor’s Degrees.
It is very common for Chinese students to use Western nicknames when introducing themselves to foreigners. Of course, people who work with overseas Chinese already know this, and so might Bloomberg viewers who are used to seeing profiles of business leaders like “Jack” Ma, “Richard” Liu, “Pony” Ma, and “Robin” Li. Of those four, only one (Li Yanhong) actually earned a degree overseas — so the Western nickname thing is not necessarily limited to hai gui (literally, ‘sea turtles’, and a name sometimes used to describe Chinese students studying abroad).
There are many reasons why Chinese students adapt nicknames. Among them are:
- Practicality. Some Chinese names are difficult for native English speakers to say. This could be an issue because the transliterated spelling looks unfamiliar to the reader (for instance, ‘小’ becomes pinyin-ized to ‘Xiao’, which is actually easy to pronounce as ‘shao’, but might intimidate someone unfamiliar with that combination of letters). Other names are just hard because of the actual process of making the sounds and/or tones. For example, ‘丛如’ gets transliterated to “Congru.” Like any other well-intentioned English speaker, I naturally want to pronounce that “KONG-ru” but that’s not even really close to what 丛如 sounds like to me when it comes from a native Chinese speaker. I work on a project with a 向宇, and even though he knows when I’m saying his name (‘Xiangyu’), I know that I’m not *quite* getting the first syllable right — I hear the way it ‘falls’ when someone else says it, and my way of speaking is just too atonal to fix. Simply to avoid dealing with the hassles that come with having their name constantly mispronounced — and the practical challenge of not even knowing when someone is trying to get their attention, because of said name-butchering, 芳文 might simply decide to use “Jane,” because no, her name does not rhyme with ‘penguin.’
- Barrier Breaking. I look at this as a ‘when in Rome’ type of thing. For an undergraduate student trying to make new friends on campus, or for an F-1 visa holder trying to break into the U.S. job market, there could be a natural desire to find common ground and break the proverbial ice. If someone feels that the person on the other end of the conversation would feel more comfortable talking to “Jenny” than to “Jingyi” or to “David” than to “Dawei” then that could be their reason for taking the nickname.
- Experimenting with Identity. I grew up with a kid named “Chip.” I always knew him to be Chip, never thought of him any other way, and probably didn’t even realize that Chip wasn’t actually his name until we were teenagers. Then, when I bumped into someone who knew him from college, there was this big moment of confusion at first. She only knew him as “Foster.” When he left home at 18 to start his next chapter, he dropped his boyhood nickname and only introduced himself by his official name. Obviously, that was a conscious choice, and I’m sure it took some getting used to, even for him. For someone who grew up in China, and only knew the U.S. through popular culture like movies and songs, traveling 8000 miles from home to start school is a pretty big shift, too — and it’s also happening to a young adult at an age when he’s shaping his own identity. If part of that shift means being “Kevin” rather than “万凯” then I see that kind of the same way I see Chip becoming Foster, even if the former case is more likely to be reversible.
A cynic might take a different tack on this. Someone more inclined towards Chinese nationalism, or someone with a bent towards white Western wokeness (and yes, the Chinese even have a word for this! 百左, literally ‘white left’, or bai zuo) might say that overseas Chinese adoption of Western names is some sort of cultural sell-out maneuver to appease American ignorance of other cultures, names, and norms.
I will have to strongly part ways with the bai zuo folks on this one. A student’s name is his or her personal choice. If the attendance sheet says “Tianhuai” but you tell me you go by “Josephine” and you write that name atop your assignments? I am ALWAYS going to call you “Josephine.” However, if you don’t use a nickname, then I am ALWAYS going to call you by the name you use, and do my best to pronounce it. In other words, I’ll never decide on a nickname for you, but I’ll also never ignore your request to use some appellation of your choice.
I’ve heard of U.S. Professors ‘overriding’ Chinese students’ requests to use their nicknames, likely out of some sense of wanting to display cultural deference or to demonstrate how ‘woke’ they are…and when I’ve heard my Chinese students tell me about this, we both sort of roll our eyes together. I’ve always interpreted our mutual eye-rolling to be our way of acknowledging that there might be other ways to demonstrate respect, besides one adult telling another adult, “No, I’m going to refer to you by the name you just asked me to refer to you as, because I know better.”
No student has ever asked me about using a Western name, and I would never advise a student either way on this. The choice is just too personal. Yes, some names are easier for English speakers to say than others. Some sound almost identical to names we already use all the time, so 东七 can just be “Don” sort of automatically. Other names still could be pinyin-ized or pronounced in a way that could awkwardly resemble an English swear word, which might make someone particularly eager to opt for a nickname instead. But NONE of that matters. NONE of that should impact one of the most personal decisions there is — the way you introduce yourself.
Your name is your name is your name is your name, and it is not my place to say otherwise. Kaming and Tiandi are just ‘Kaming’ and ‘Tiandi’ to me, but ‘Yecong’ is ‘Oliver’ and ‘Xiaoke’ is ‘Kay.’ Why? Not because I said so, but because THEY said so. And that’s really all there is to it.
Oh, and I just realized that I haven’t explained the title of this post. For years, I taught a course called “E-Commerce.” Naturally, I got to know quite a bit about the domestic and international e-commerce titans over the course of dozens of iterations of that class…and ever since I read Duncan Clark’s book Alibaba, I’ve been a huge fan of Jack Ma. I’ve probably read dozens of news stories about him and seen nearly as many documentary clips about his background and about the rise of the Alibaba empire. But through the course of all that learning, and even through many conversations, with many Chinese people about him and his business, I became so used to “Jack Ma” that I never considered him “Ma Yun.”
A couple years ago, a student introduced herself on the first day of class, and lightheartedly said something like, “I’m from Hangzhou, and I want you to know that our city is famous for many things — not just Ma Yun.”
At that moment, I — the guy who had just finished saying that he had taught the course more than 15 times, and was looking forward to building even more material onto the foundation of international e-commerce company profiles from the previous semester — blurted out “Wait, wait…who the heck is Ma Yun?”
There was some nervous laughter in the room on that one. I’d like to think that I recovered from it, but the lesson was learned — even when using the nickname, always learn both forms. Just in case.
GoodWaveData 