No more "Christian name, sir?" in Kent, UK

[Randy Alexander]

On Sun, Mar 28, 2010 at 10:10 PM, Joel S. Berson <Berson at att.net> wrote:
> At 3/28/2010 02:18 AM, Dan Goodman wrote:
>>The two Chinese I'm most likely to talk with (owner-operators of a
>>convenience store in Minneapolis) give their names as "Joe" and "Ann."
>
> Many years ago -- 30 to 40 -- I was at a fast food place near the New
> England Conservatory of Music around noon on a Saturday. Â The place
> was full of teen-age music students, many Asian. Â The names I heard
> bandied about among the female (Asian) violin students were, like,
> Tiffany, Alison, etc.

I graduated from there in '89.  There were English names then among
the Asian students, but there was certainly a fair share of Asian
names.  I would guess at that time, more of them kept their original
names.  Thinking about it more, it seems that most Chinese students
would  have English names, but Korean and Japanese students would keep
their original names.  Maybe tones were a factor in this -- Korean and
Japanese names wouldn't sound too botched in an American accent, but
Chinese wouldn't even be close.

--
Randy Alexander
Jilin City, China
Blogs:
Manchu studies: http://www.sinoglot.com/manchu
Chinese characters: http://www.sinoglot.com/yuwen
Language in China (group blog): http://www.sinoglot.com/blog

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