Her Name Is Qiongyue. You Can Call Her “Joanna”
For many international students, college checklists include choosing an English first name
Her Name Is Qiongyue. You Can Call Her “Joanna”
Her Name Is Qiongyue. You Can Call Her “Joanna”
Min Sung is now Jeff. Botai is now Jerry. Yuanyuan is now Amanda.
For many students who hail from China, Thailand, India, South Korea, and other Asian countries, choosing an easier-to-pronounce first name is among the most important decisions they make when coming to college in the United States.
It’s a tradition that goes back decades, intended to help immigrants and visitors assimilate more easily and avoid repeated mispronunciations and misspellings. In some cases, names are chosen quickly and may reflect a student’s exposure to Western culture. (See Lancelot and Jeff.) In other cases, students are assigned a Western name as early as kindergarten, which is when Chinese schools begin teaching children English. Still others adopt an English Christian name when they’re baptized.
Yasuko Kanno, a BU Wheelock College of Education & Human Development associate professor and chair of the language and literacy education department, teaches many international students from Asian countries who go by English names.
“They don’t want their names to get botched, or people mispronouncing it all the time,” she says. Kanno, a native of Japan, who chose to continue introducing herself by her ethnic first name (pronounced Yas-ko) when she came to the United States for college more than two decades ago, can relate.
“I don’t think [Yasuko] is a particularly hard name to pronounce,” she says. “But I’ve been told that I’m Jessica, I’m Yasmin, I’m Jasco, I’m Costco. It gets very, very tiresome.”
And then there are those, including coffee baristas and even some professors, who will avoid saying difficult names altogether, Kanno says.
But should it be this way, or should Americans buckle down and learn to pronounce all names correctly? Bostonia spoke to several Asian students about their first names, how they chose their new names, and what they think of the practice.
Aditya Pal (GRS’23)
“Adi”
“My full Indian name is Aditya Pal. That actually means ‘rising sun.’ That’s a very common Indian name. But the name which I’ve adopted as an English name is Adi, which takes the first three letters. And that’s just the easiest shorthand.
I actually found it very funny at first that we can pick our names. I joked that I might call myself Megatron or Optimus Prime or something hilarious. But I was like, no, I know that we can name ourselves anything, but it should somewhat resemble our real name at least.
In India, every name has a meaning and every name, it has some thought put into it. [Some] put spiritual religious thoughts behind the naming. Maybe it’s good luck or something, good fortune for the name. Personally, for me, I don’t really mind it. I know that the parents put a lot into it, but it’s not something like a disrespect to my name if I shorten it and make it easier for other people to pronounce it.
It actually makes my life easier. It makes everyone else’s life easier. So, I don’t think it’s anything like a compromise.”
Photo by Cydney Scott
Botai Zhou (Questrom’23)
“Jerry”
“I came to high school in the US from Zhengzhou, China, so my English name was Jerry in high school. And when I graduated from high school and came to college, I decided it’s time for a switch, so I went to my original name, Botai, which my parents gave me.
Half the people I know in the US call me Jerry, the other half call me Botai [pronounced bow-tie]. It’s kind of funny. I guess the reason why I [switched back] from Jerry to Botai is…Jerry is the name I chose because I liked Tom and Jerry when I was like seven years old. It doesn’t really mean anything to me. And Botai is actually my real name my parents gave me, and I think it sounds cooler than Jerry—no offense to people named Jerry out there.”
Photo by Cydney Scott
Qiongyue Zhang (COM’24, Questrom’24)
“Joanna”
“Chinese students choose to have their own English name when they come to the US, because they feel like it’s…easier to pronounce. But some of my friends would still use their original Chinese name, because they feel like they need to spread this Chinese culture.
For Chinese students, we have different ways to find our English names. Some of us were named after the English names that are similar to your Chinese name. For example, if their Chinese name is Dà wěi, their English name might be David. But some students just choose to look in a dictionary and find the name that vibes with them, and then some use an English name randomly or just from their favorite characters in TV dramas. I have a high school friend who named himself Lancelot.”
Photo by Cydney Scott
Yuanyuan Wu (CGS’22, COM’24)
“Amanda”
“My Chinese name [Yuanyuan]…means being positive, being elegant, and all the kinds of good meanings. I chose [Amanda] because I know it is for the name of a brave god. It shows something like courage, confident, and all that stuff. So, I wanted to choose Amanda and make me sound like I’m confident.
I feel like it is kind of like me seizing the power to control what I want to do. And also the meaning of brave, confidence, to what I’m doing right now. And actually my friends even in China…call me by my English name, the Chinese version of my English name.”
Photo by Cydney Scott
Yiheng Shi (Questrom’24)
“Stan”
“A lot of international students, before coming here, have to do a lot of preparations. They have to be [in] compliance with school, they have to rent an apartment, or they have to plan to buy a car here. There’s a lot of things going on and there’s a lot of pressure, and preparing for [your] English name is probably one of the important steps. I would say it’s like a passport: if you have one, it’s going to make your life a lot easier.
I grew up in Shanghai, China, and before coming to the US, my English teacher told us that you need an English name so you can make easy conversation, you can make life a lot easier. I have no idea which English name I want to pick, so I just pick up my dictionary and I just pick a random page. Stanley—it’s a name for a wooden floor manufacturer, and I say, okay, Stanley, then that’s my name. I didn’t really think about it, but I didn’t want to change it because I’ve been using it for so many years. I kind of liked it, but I might change my English name in the future—we’ll see.
It’s kind of fun, it’s like an avatar…just like changing your name on their social media, I guess. You can change your name, like, super easy on social media now. And a lot of students, like for international students, they have multiple friend groups because they might have high school in this area and they move on to college in another area. But they have many different friends in different places, so they might have different avatars for different groups.”
Photo by Cydney Scott
Min Sung Kim (Questrom’24)
“Jeff”
“I was in South Korea going to elementary school, and one day I decided to go to middle school in Canada because my parents wanted me to learn English. It was more like a study abroad concept. I was on my plane to Vancouver, Canada, and I was watching this movie, 21 Jump Street, and there’s this famous phrase, ‘My name is Jeff.’ And when I heard that phrase, I thought maybe I should have an English name as well since I’m going to a country where English is the native language. Jeff was simple, catchy, and I thought that scene was super funny. And I’m more an active, bright, sociable person. So, I said, okay, maybe Jeff fits me as a character, so I’ll go by Jeff from now on. And that was already 10, 12 years ago, and here I am as Jeff still.
I wanted an English name to be cool and to fit in in this society where I’m gonna be for a while. But thinking about it now, I think it was a good decision because I like my name Jeff. People sometimes use Min Sung as a joke or if they’re talking about some serious matters, but also Jeff gives me a different vibe as a character.
So, I like to interchange between Jeff and Min Sung and, yeah, life is good.”
Photo by Jackie Ricciardi
Abhishek Malakar (GRS’25)
“Shaq”
“My official name is Abhishek. Back in India, Abhishek is a very common name. A lot of students have it. I think it’s got something to do with one of the actors in Bollywood. It was a little difficult for people here to pronounce my name. The nickname that I took is Shaq. I think everyone would be aware of Shaquille O’Neal. He’s a former basketball player. I did not exactly take the name because of that.
Once I used my official name somewhere, at one of the receptions, and they called me Abby Shaq. And from that I thought maybe Shaq would be easier for people to pronounce here. So, I just took that as a nickname. And my friends from India also started calling me Shaq, because it’s much easier to pronounce that than the whole name together.
For official purposes, if tomorrow my work is going to go somewhere, like on a paper, or if my work is going to be produced on television or something, I would like my official name to be marking it—like how a painter marks a painting.
Coming to the aspect of whether it is right or wrong, I don’t feel that it matters a lot because at the end of the day, I would rather like to be known by my work than my name. Even if someone pronounces my name wrong, it does not matter to me because tomorrow when they see me, they probably remember me because of what I had done for them.”
Photo by Cydney Scott
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