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<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto"><b><span style="font-size:24.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif""><a href="http://www.npr.org/blogs/parallels/2015/04/20/400399802/so-long-cinderella-website-helps-chinese-find-better-english-names">http://www.npr.org/blogs/parallels/2015/04/20/400399802/so-long-cinderella-website-helps-chinese-find-better-english-names</a><o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto"><b><span style="font-size:24.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif""><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto"><b><span style="font-size:24.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">So Long 'Cinderella,' Website Helps Chinese Find Better English Names<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">April 20, 2015 4:26 AM ET
<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><a href="http://www.npr.org/people/4569077/frank-langfitt"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";color:blue;text-decoration:none"><img border="0" width="100" height="100" id="Picture_x0020_1" src="cid:image001.jpg@01D07B96.D56289A0" alt="Frank Langfitt"></span></a><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif""><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif""><a href="http://www.npr.org/people/4569077/frank-langfitt"><span style="color:blue"><o:p></o:p></span></a></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><u><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";color:blue"><a href="http://www.npr.org/people/4569077/frank-langfitt"><span style="color:blue">Frank Langfitt
</span><span style="color:windowtext;text-decoration:none"><o:p></o:p></span></a></span></u></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif""><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif""><a href="http://www.twitter.com/franklangfitt"><span style="color:blue">Twitter</span></a>
<a href="https://www.facebook.com/flangfitt"><span style="color:blue">Facebook</span></a>
<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto"><b><span style="font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif""><a href="javascript:NPR.Player.openPlayer(400399802,%20400929922,%20null,%20NPR.Player.Action.PLAY_NOW,%20NPR.Player.Type.STORY,%20'0')"><span style="color:blue">Listen
to the Story</span></a><o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif""><a href="http://www.npr.org/programs/morning-edition/"><span style="color:blue">Morning Edition</span></a><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">4 min 8 sec
<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<ul type="disc">
<li class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo1">
<span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif""><a href="javascript:NPR.Player.openPlayer(400399802,%20400929922,%20null,%20NPR.Player.Action.ADD_TO_PLAYLIST,%20NPR.Player.Type.STORY,%20'0')"><span style="color:blue">Playlist</span></a><o:p></o:p></span></li><li class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo1">
<span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif""><a href="http://pd.npr.org/anon.npr-mp3/npr/me/2015/04/20150420_me_so_long_cinderella_website_helps_chinese_find_better_english_names.mp3?dl=1"><span style="color:blue">Download</span></a><o:p></o:p></span></li><li class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo1">
<span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif""><a href="http://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=400399802"><span style="color:blue">Transcript</span></a><o:p></o:p></span></li></ul>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif""><img border="0" width="946" height="503" id="Picture_x0020_2" src="cid:image002.jpg@01D07B96.D56289A0" alt="The website bestenglishname.com uses the answers to questions about subjects such as music, sports and personal style to generate suitable English names."></span><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif""><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">The website
<a href="http://bestenglishname.com/"><span style="color:blue">bestenglishname.com</span></a> uses the answers to questions about subjects such as music, sports and personal style to generate suitable English names.
<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">Via bestenglishname.com
<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">Cinderella. Billboard. Mo Money. Lady Gaga.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">What do they all have in common?<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">They are a few of the unusual English names young Chinese have adopted over the years in hopes of mixing more
easily with Westerners. Such offbeat names, though, sometimes have the opposite effect, generating puzzlement and the wrong kind of smiles.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">Lindsay Jernigan, an American entrepreneur, has set up a new website,
<a href="http://bestenglishname.com/"><span style="color:blue">bestenglishname.com</span></a>, to help Chinese choose more appropriate names.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif""><img border="0" width="680" height="510" id="Picture_x0020_3" src="cid:image003.jpg@01D07B96.D56289A0" alt="Lindsay Jernigan, 25, started bestenglishname.com. The service costs $2.50 and Jernigan says about 2,000 people have used it so far."></span><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif""><a href="http://www.npr.org/blogs/parallels/2015/04/20/400399802/so-long-cinderella-website-helps-chinese-find-better-english-names" title="Enlarge"><span style="color:blue">i</span></a>
<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">Lindsay Jernigan, 25, started
<a href="http://bestenglishname.com/"><span style="color:blue">bestenglishname.com</span></a>. The service costs $2.50 and Jernigan says about 2,000 people have used it so far.
<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">Courtesy of Lindsay Jernigan
<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">Jernigan, 25, noticed a need for the service while working in her first job in Shanghai. She said some female
colleagues were using English names that were inappropriate — and they didn't know it.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">"These names that we would see (as) 'stripper' names for really smart young women," Jernigan recalls recently
at her office in Shanghai. "So, I've heard a lot of people laughing about the 'Candy' and the 'Cherry' ... 'Sapphire,' 'Twinkle.'"<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">Instead of facilitating communication, Jernigan says, other names that the Chinese chose just sowed confusion.
For instance, she had a co-worker named "Eleven."<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">"Scheduling meetings at 10:30 and then saying that 'Eleven' was coming was causing a lot of issues," Jernigan
says. Foreign colleagues rolled their eyes and asked Eleven if they could just call her by her Chinese name.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">Jernigan's website offers customers a quiz that uses an algorithm to generate five suitable names. Users are
asked to choose their favorite sport, music and personal style: Are you more like Zac Efron or Justin Bieber?<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">Users can put in their birthdays, professions and choose whether they want a name that's easy to pronounce.
Jernigan says the service costs about $2.50 and has drawn more than 2,000 customers.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif""><img border="0" width="700" height="929" id="Picture_x0020_4" src="cid:image004.jpg@01D07B96.D56289A0" alt="Phat Song chose his own English name years ago, after drinking with a bunch of Americans in a Beijing bar. He says no matter how you spell it, it suits him. "Phat" — or cool — is the first American slang he learned. And, he adds, "I'm F-A-T.""></span><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif""><a href="http://www.npr.org/blogs/parallels/2015/04/20/400399802/so-long-cinderella-website-helps-chinese-find-better-english-names" title="Enlarge"><span style="color:blue">i</span></a>
<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">Phat Song chose his own English name years ago, after drinking with a bunch of Americans in a Beijing bar. He
says no matter how you spell it, it suits him. "Phat" — or cool — is the first American slang he learned. And, he adds, "I'm F-A-T."
<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">Courtesy of Phat Song
<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">Recently, Jernigan, who grew up in Memphis and London, let me take the quiz. We used my Mandarin name, "Feiteng,"
which means "fly swiftly upward." Among the English names the website suggested for me were "Drew," "Tate" and "Julian."<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">Scott Kronick, who runs Ogilvy Public Relations in China and throughout Asia Pacific, has spent more than two
decades in China and overseen thousands of Chinese staff. Along the way, he has heard a lot of unconventional names.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">"There were people who selected their names for times of the year, so we had a 'January,' 'February,' 'April,'
'May,' 'June,' 'Spring,' 'July,'" Kronick recalls. "We had a 'Popeye' and there's a 'Robin Hood.' "<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">Popeye was a very popular cartoon in China in the 1990s, so that makes some sense, but where did these other
strange names come from? Kronick wrote about the phenomenon in his book, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Lighter-Side-China-English-Chinese/dp/0992762545/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1421148610&sr=8-2&keywords=the+lighter+side+of+china">
<span style="color:blue">The Lighter Side of China</span></a>.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">He thinks foreign teachers assigned some of these names to students as kind of a joke.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">"I think the English teachers that were here during the time were really having some fun," Kronick says. "I
can't imagine where — we have a staff member named 'Morphine' — got his name."<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">Kronick's favorite English name, though, belongs to co-worker Phat Song.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">Phat, whose Chinese name is Song Le, says no matter how you spell his name, it suits him. As we speak over Internet
phone, he explains.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">"You don't see me," Phat says. "I'm really fat. I'm F-A-T. I'm really F-A-T."<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">Phat stands a little over 5-foot-8 and weighs about 220 pounds.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">He didn't get his name from a teacher; he chose it himself about 15 years ago after drinking with a bunch of
Americans in a Beijing bar.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">"'Phat,' that's the first American slang I learned," he says. "It's a black people's slang. You always use this
word to describe something cool."<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">Like many Chinese, Phat was drawn to his name because it was different and a way to stand out in a culture that's
changing, but still fairly conformist. He asked his American buddies if it was a good name.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">"They laughed," Phat recalls. "They said, 'It's weird. It's not a man's name.' I said, 'I don't care, because
a name is for people to remember you.' "<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">Phat says it works. After he introduces himself to foreigners, most never forget.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
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