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

[Barbara Need]

It goes the other way as well. When I studied Chinese for my funny
language requirement at UChicago, my teacher named Ni3 Ba4 (I think I
have the tones right). I don't remember the character for my personal
name, but the family name character has three ears. Other students
also had Chinese names that were clearly based on the sounds of their
own names.

Barbara Need
Chicago

(I wonder what my nephew's Chinese teacher named him!)

On 27 Mar 2010, at 9:28 PM, Judy Prince wrote:

> A quick story illustrating perhaps what you've found in the Chinese
> students
> insisting on English given names.  Students I taught English and
> speech at a
> university in Taipei, Taiwan, always had to give themselves (or be
> given)
> English first names which, in those classes, we all called them.
> The names
> would often be similar-sounding to a part of their Chinese
> "first" (not
> "family") names, or they'd evoke a quality that the student especially
> valued.  One of my female students came to my desk  and said she
> wanted to
> change her name because she'd found one that she truly loved:
> Beggy.  I
> tried to make myself look very serious, and suggested a very close-
> sounding
> name:  Becky.  She thought about it, pronounced it aloud a few
> times, and
> said:  "Thank you, Miss Prince.....but I prefer Beggy."  Beggy it
> was for
> the rest of the semester!

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