I read somewhere that there are only about 500 total surnames in China and of those around 100 are commonly used, such as the top three common names Lee, Wang & Chang. Many Chinese also adopt a western first name, such as the two girls, Mary & Hannah, who here on campus help the foreign teachers out with day to day things that we may need. Kathy, is a primary school teacher that I coordinate with for teaching one day a week at Qinghau Bilingual School here in Linyi and I have been corresponding with Sharon the school coordinator down in Yiwu, where I will be going to teach for a week long “English Boot-camp” school next week.
Now I’m sure these are not their real first names in Chinese. Actually the first names for Chinese is given by the grandparents and is something that is not done right away as they need time to get a feeling for the babies character before giving them a name. This adoption of a western first name was never the case in Japan, where the American influence has been around for a while and one would think it could happen there as well, but it hasn’t.
This got me to thinking about my own name & nicknames over the years. On my passport my official name is, Louis Lester Hayes. My middle name has been passed down on my dad’s side for at least a couple of generations as his middle name and his father’s was also Lester. When my older brother was born my mom and dad named him Gregory, or Greg. My dad though use to call him Louie as a nickname and when I came along three years later they decide to name me Louie because my dad liked the name and made it officially Louis, which no one ever uses.
Now if I was from France Louis would be pronounced “Louie”, as my mom would always call me and a hand full of my family members still do, but Americans pronounce it Lou-ess by pronouncing the “s”. When I was younger my older brother would tease me and call me Woody, pronounced “woo-dee”. Tom Enloe, who I grew up with and one of the more popular kids in high school, would give nicknames to everyone and he use to call me “Lucky Lou”, which was pretty accurate.
I always introduce myself as Lou and that’s what most people know me by, short & simple. Lou Hayes is what’s on my Oregon drivers license, but I also have given myself a few a.k.a’s over the years. From my time teaching English in Japan the Japanese have a hard time with the “L” sound, which comes out sounding like “R”, so I occasionally sign-off on correspondence to close friends with “Rou-san”. Here lately I’ve been using my own Chinese version of Lou, “Wu”. And sometimes I even do a hybrid of both Chinese and Japanese for Louie with “Wu-wii”. That last one is actually one of my favorites, because I guess it reminds of when my older brother would call me Woody.
Sayonara,
Mr. Wu-wii
I knew when I went to China last time that my students would have a hard time saying Gabrielle, so I decided that I would just go by Gabe. That is what a lot of my friends call me here anyway. Well, the majority of my students couldn’t say Gabe correctly, either. They always said Gabe-a. I think I should shorten it this time around and have everyone call me G or by my Chinese name, Zi(3) Wei(1), which means purple flower.
That is why I named myself Steve when I moved to the states from Taiwan. It works both ways. People would not call me correctly by my given name Ting-I. They would say, Ting “I”, but it is pronounced Ting “E” which really annoyed me when I was younger for some reason. So I named myself Steve because “E” was close to Steve and “I” was not involved. Keep blogging Lou. It is fascinating to see how you are progressing in Linyi. Makes me want to be a civil engineering teacher there. I do speak Mandarin!
-Steve