Foreign students that take on silly names

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My mate, who is doing his PhD, was telling me about how these crazy Chinese lads and ladies take on an English name when they come over... but always pick the stupidest ones!! So he was saying one guy he knows has called himself "Arthur" and another on "Humphry".

Classic!

― Ceezar, Thursday, 23 December 2004 10:15 (twenty years ago)

Yeah, I knew a very cracking Japanese girl called "Jamie".

― mark grout (mark grout), Thursday, 23 December 2004 10:18 (twenty years ago)

I knew a guy called Lawrence Law.

― ken c (ken c), Thursday, 23 December 2004 10:18 (twenty years ago)

if i was studyign in taiwan id totaly call myself 'long wang'.

― :| (....), Thursday, 23 December 2004 10:19 (twenty years ago)

you do know that "long wang" means "fart horse" in chinese right?

― ken c (ken c), Thursday, 23 December 2004 10:21 (twenty years ago)

of course. why else would i call myself that?

― :| (....), Thursday, 23 December 2004 10:22 (twenty years ago)

maybe you yearn for a long wang?

― ken c (ken c), Thursday, 23 December 2004 10:24 (twenty years ago)

i love smelly horses, yes.

― :| (....), Thursday, 23 December 2004 10:25 (twenty years ago)

I knew a woman called Wandy Wong.

― Adamdrome Crankypants (Autumn Almanac), Thursday, 23 December 2004 10:26 (twenty years ago)

My friend worked with a bunch of Spanish kids in the holidays. The best names included Glacier, Legend, Spiderman and The Incredible Hulk. Playing football was classic: "Man on The Incredible Hulk!"

― dog latin (dog latin), Thursday, 23 December 2004 10:38 (twenty years ago)

what's wrong with Wandy Wong? Asides from potentials for the Wondy Wang spoonerism?

― ken c (ken c), Thursday, 23 December 2004 10:48 (twenty years ago)

I really like the name Humphrey.

― marianna lcl (marianna lcl), Thursday, 23 December 2004 11:05 (twenty years ago)

hump free

― ken c (ken c), Thursday, 23 December 2004 11:07 (twenty years ago)

It's true though - they always pick names like Felix or Sherman or Francis or Maggie... Wonder where they get them from?

― dog latin (dog latin), Thursday, 23 December 2004 11:08 (twenty years ago)

I once had two Japanese students who called themselves José and Miguel. Cue much hilarity when anyone came round to collect their school trip money. Mind you, this was when Paul Weller was called The Paul Weller Movement, so fair enough.

I have always refused to call people by these English names, unless totally stumped. Not least because it makes it more difficult to learn where they're from.

You tend to get a lot of Celines.

― Puddin'Head Miller (PJ Miller), Thursday, 23 December 2004 11:16 (twenty years ago)

So PJ, what do you call Ken??

― Markelby (Mark C), Thursday, 23 December 2004 11:17 (twenty years ago)

They tried to make the phonetic version of coca cola for the chinese market- and it ended up with the translation 'bite the wax tadpole'

― Nellie (nellskies), Thursday, 23 December 2004 11:20 (twenty years ago)

in hong kong it's roughly translated as tasty cola.

― ken c (ken c), Thursday, 23 December 2004 11:25 (twenty years ago)

maybe phonetic is the wrong word but it was like ku-ke ku-la or some such.

― Nellie (nellskies), Thursday, 23 December 2004 11:49 (twenty years ago)

http://www.snopes.com/cokelore/tadpole.asp

― Steve.n. (sjkirk), Thursday, 23 December 2004 11:52 (twenty years ago)

Is Ken not your real name, Ken? What is it, then? Everywhere I go, the kids want to know.

― Puddin'Head Miller (PJ Miller), Thursday, 23 December 2004 11:53 (twenty years ago)

Ping-Pong

― Frankenstein On Ice (blueski), Thursday, 23 December 2004 12:00 (twenty years ago)

There's something vaguely offensive about this thread.

― supercub, Thursday, 23 December 2004 13:00 (twenty years ago)

We are vaguely sorry.

― Puddin'Head Miller (PJ Miller), Thursday, 23 December 2004 13:05 (twenty years ago)

in my department we have a girl from tawain who chose "teresa"--but her real name is very pretty: Yu-wen, i think.

― ryan (ryan), Thursday, 23 December 2004 14:26 (twenty years ago)

There's something vaguely offensive about this thread.
-- supercub (mai...) (webmail), December 23rd, 2004 1:00 PM. (link)

You think this one's bad, try here..

Chinese/Japanese speakers: Can you please tell me what this means?

― mark grout (mark grout), Thursday, 23 December 2004 14:28 (twenty years ago)

wait how is that thread offensive?

― ken c (ken c), Thursday, 23 December 2004 14:45 (twenty years ago)

Ken is certainly my real name, but i also have a chinese name "Pak Yin" (hence Kenneth P Y Chu").. both are awesome names and as real as each other.

I am considering adding "Danger" as my middle name.

― ken c (ken c), Thursday, 23 December 2004 14:50 (twenty years ago)

I'm in Hong Kong at the moment, and we were shopping earlier today. My sister was served by someone called Achilles, and his collegue was called Cool....

― jellybean (jellybean), Thursday, 23 December 2004 14:51 (twenty years ago)

My elegant friend Denny chose her name as an anglicization of her Chinese name, which means 'elegant garden'. I teased her just a bit in school (because I had a crush on her), saying that 'Denny' captures the DEN sound of garden just fine but sort of leaves out the elegance. But she was unflappable.

― Paul Eater (eater), Thursday, 23 December 2004 15:05 (twenty years ago)

that's quite an elaborate tease.

― legend, Thursday, 23 December 2004 15:26 (twenty years ago)

I'm no Chinese speaker, but I don't think that "long wang" means "fart horse" when the word for horse (or so I thought) is "ma."

― jaymc (jaymc), Thursday, 23 December 2004 15:33 (twenty years ago)

i was just messing with :|, jay

― ken c (ken c), Thursday, 23 December 2004 15:36 (twenty years ago)

I did briefly meet an Asian businessman in my old job called Long Wang.

― dog latin (dog latin), Thursday, 23 December 2004 15:39 (twenty years ago)

Thats a funny name for a job. tra la la la laaaaa

― mark grout (mark grout), Thursday, 23 December 2004 15:40 (twenty years ago)

someone at my old job was once told to go and ask for a Long Weight.

― ken c (ken c), Thursday, 23 December 2004 15:42 (twenty years ago)

Also, I've noticed a lot of times what happens is that first- or second-generation Asian kids will adopt a name that's phonetically similar to their birth name, which may be more important than one that's popular. Hence, women named May (Mei) abound.

― jaymc (jaymc), Thursday, 23 December 2004 15:44 (twenty years ago)

Thank you for answering, Ken.

― Puddin'Head Miller (PJ Miller), Thursday, 23 December 2004 17:26 (twenty years ago)

Uh, most of the people I know who've done that picked pretty normal names: Mike, Annie, Pam. I know one girl who went by Yolanda, but she spelled it Yolander, so I sort of wondered if I was pronouncing it right...most people just go by their real names, though, or nicknames for them.

― Maria (Maria), Thursday, 23 December 2004 17:52 (twenty years ago)

We had some Taiwanese engineers in for a few months once on a project we were doing and one of them picked Nova as a name. We were using some Data General mini-computers, two of which were called Nova, though I don't know if that's where he got it from. Another guy named Lin called himself Linger when we told him there was an employee of ours with the last name Ringer. He knew he was being funny, I'm pretty sure.

― nickn (nickn), Thursday, 23 December 2004 22:24 (twenty years ago)

I know an Iranian guy called Mehdi, he used Mehdi at college but in his job at a pizza place he used Mel, I guess it was just easier for him.

― Jarlr'mai (jarlrmai), Thursday, 23 December 2004 23:00 (twenty years ago)

I have a student called Erica. Even when I explained that he shared his name with my grandmother, he didn't want to change it.

Another one goes by the name of Cripple. I asked him why, and he said that he'd looked in the dictionary and it means 'slightly imperfect'.

Then there's football names, where they haven't even got it right. I honestly have one called 'Elicsson' (sic) and also a 'Rual'(sic). Which is how I write their names. The thing is, many of them have had these names for years and are really attached to them. When you point out that their names are not actually names but just random words, or not even words, or just plain stupid or offensive - I have a Bush, and although I don't have any Hitlers I know a man who does -they look crestfallen to say the least. Basically if it's not a recognisable name I just call them by their Chinese name, except if the name seems to fit. Killer, for example, is a big serious looking guy who has a great sense of humour, while Jamily could mince for China in the 2008 Olympics.

Just one more. There was a letter in an English language newspaper for students, in a column written by some expat who'd set himself up as an agony uncle. The letter was from a girl who had become friends with her foreign teacher (male), going round his apartment to watch DVDs and the like. But after a few weeks he seemed to lose interest, leaving her confused and hurt.

Her name, which is not at all uncommmon here, even amongst male students, was Swallow.

― rwillmsen (rwillmsen), Thursday, 23 December 2004 23:19 (twenty years ago)

there was a guy at my school who chose his english name as charis, which he took from the word charisma. it suited him. there was another who called himself aramis, and we also had a girl called tuesday...

― emsk, Friday, 24 December 2004 08:58 (twenty years ago)

When you point out that their names are not actually names but just random words, or not even words, or just plain stupid or offensive

i knew a couple of guys named Dick.

― ken c (ken c), Friday, 24 December 2004 10:50 (twenty years ago)

I was in halls with a Korean called Elton. He was a bit unpleasant.

― Markelby (Mark C), Friday, 24 December 2004 11:09 (twenty years ago)

There is a Vietnamese girl at my college who calls herself Cynthia, which I initially thought a bit odd as I don't like the name at all, and it's not particularly popular. However, she chose it because its definition is the same as her original name - moon or moon child or something - which is probably the best way to do it, as you still kind of have your own name but stupid English people don't keep stumbling over it.

― emil.y (emil.y), Sunday, 26 December 2004 15:26 (twenty years ago)

I was in halls with a Korean called Elton. He was a bit unpleasant.

was he unpleasant BECAUSE he was called Elton? or was that just some random extra bit of info?

― ken c (ken c), Sunday, 26 December 2004 15:30 (twenty years ago)

Foreign students at my school always kept the names they were born with. This whole thread is weird to me.

― roxymuzak (roxymuzak), Sunday, 26 December 2004 15:45 (twenty years ago)

When I worked in Hong Kong, I had Chinese co-workers who had adopted English names for themselves. Some of them were quaint, old-fashioned names such as Cynthia, Maude, Maisie etc, but I also knew lads who called themselves Umbrella, Raisin, and Wardrobe. I think they just picked words randomly out of an English dictionary, to be honest.

― C J (C J), Sunday, 26 December 2004 16:41 (twenty years ago)

Calum Robert Waddell

― yob, Sunday, 26 December 2004 16:59 (twenty years ago)

you do know that "long wang" means "fart horse" in chinese right?
-- ken c (pykachu10...), December 23rd, 2004 5:21 AM. (ken c)

My oral report on Chinese mythology actually included a whole section about the long wang (dragon kings). Something to the effect of:

"The Long Wang hold jurisdiction over funerals and rain; when mistakes or omissions were made in funerals, the descendants of the deceased often called upon the power of the mighty Long Wang to help them. During droughts and seasons of little moisture, the people invoked the Long Wang for assistance. There were many types of Long Wang: the celestial Long Wang of the skies and stars, the Long Wang of four oceans, and the Long Wang of five cardinal points."

The teacher wasn't amused.

― Curt1s St3ph3ns, Sunday, 26 December 2004 17:31 (twenty years ago)

i know a korean exchange student in chicago who named herself bertha!!!

― phil-two (phil-two), Sunday, 26 December 2004 18:10 (twenty years ago)

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