“…As names adjust to a foreign country, something is always lost – be it a dot, a letter, or an accent. What happens to your name in another territory is similar to what happens to a voluminous pack of spinach when cooked – some new taste can be added to the main ingredient, but its size shrinks visibly. It is this cutback a foreigner learns first. The primary requirement of accommodation in a strange land is the estrangement of the hitherto most familiar: your name.”
Such was a passage from Elif ?afak’s The Saint of Incipient Insanities, a Turkish novel originally written in English and dealing with solitude, alienation, language and multiculturalism through the fictive lives of a group of university students in Boston.
Names are one of the most important immanent characters in one’s personality. Most anthropologist agree that names are a part of every culture, even the most primitive ones in the track of history. Names are universal and important elements to give its holders a personal identity that serves a communication tool to the others.
What happens if a name and its holder travel to a foreign country? Usually, it ends up with a tension between them because the holder must make some changes in the name in order to communicate with the people in the new country. But such a change is not without a cost.
“…When you leave your homeland behind, they say, you have to renounce at least one part of you. If that was the case, ?mer knew exactly what he had left behind: his dots! Back in Turkey, he used to be ?MER ?ZS?PAH?O?LU. Here in America, he had become an OMAR OZSIPAHIOGLU.”
However, in some cases, leaving the dots behind may be insufficient: Pei-Hsuan Lu is a Umass Boston graduate student from Taiwan who had to adapt an American name to let people remember her easier.
“I just chose my own name to sound as an English word which is like ‘patient’, or just use my English name, Kevina” she said. “But I prefer Taiwanese call my Chinese name. In that way, I feel closer to them”
Pei-Hsuan is taking the first step to sacrifice a partial or complete of her name to better communicate with the people in US. Nevertheless, she also has the right to expect an understanding from the others. “It’s okay if people do not know how to pronounce my name; they can ask” she continues. “But I feel uncomfortable when people just simplify my name or just make it up. In our culture, it is pretty disrespectful.”
“…Foreigners are people with either one or more parts of their names in the dark. Likewise, in his case, too, ?mer had replaced his name with less arduous and more presentable Omar or Omer, depending on the speaker’s voice.”
There is a common belief that name sacrifices are only to be made by non-Westerners who has migrate and establish a new life in the West. A belief that is not only wrong, but also missing in terms of showing how far name sacrifices could be go in other cultures.
Oda Fiskum is a Norwegian student studying in China who had to adapt a Chinese name, from the beginning of Chinese language learning in London. She was named as “???” by one of her Chinese teachers.
“No matter what you’re doing in China, you’ll have to deal with a lot of paperwork. And a lot of forms are for Chinese names which are short and with different characters.” says Oda, pointing out the impossibility to survive Chinese bureaucracy without a Chinese name.
“I personally find the insistence on a Chinese name somewhat alienating and insist on people calling me Oda” complains she. “My Chinese friends call me Oda, and not Mengqin, which is my Chinese name, but it’s usually altered to ‘Wuda’ to fit the sounds of the Chinese language” pointing out her “secret formula” to compromise between bureaucracy and identity.
It seems like the name sacrifices will never cease until the humanity unites in one for constructing a second Babel Tower. Although, it is still in our hands to find secret “formulas” that helps keep the pride to our names and make foreigners understand it.
BOX:
Interview with Rosalyn Negrón Goldbarg, Ph.D
Rosalyn Negrón Goldbarg is a full-time faculty member of Anthropology department in Umass Boston. She focuses on code switching, dialect switching and ethnic discourse, her work shows how language is central to contextual ethnic self-representation.
– Why does one need to switch or adapt a new name in a new country?
There are both instrumental and symbolic reasons. In instrumental or practical terms if a foreign name is difficult to spell or pronounce a simplification of the name may be necessary in order to smoothen routine interactions. In this way, both the person who the name belongs to and others they come in contact with may opt for the simplest route.
The choice to change a name may be a deliberate decision that some immigrants to this country make in order to achieve acceptance and/or proceed with interactions hassle-free. However, this is not to say that people who change or adapt their names do not have ethnic or self-pride.
Finally, just as some insist on the appropriate use of their personal name as a symbolic expression of their affective attachment to their homeland and people, others may adopt a new name as a symbolic break from the life left behind and an acceptance of new social and cultural expectations.
– What happens to one’s real name in the new country? In what context can it be utilized?
It depends on the country. The US, both officially and unofficially, has tended towards assimilationism, under which there may be strong external pressures to conform to some American ideal and use a name that more closely reflects the changing relationship between an immigrant and the host country.
But today it is clear that immigrants can take several different paths as they establish a life in the US. In major cities with large immigrant communities and ethnic enclaves, first and later generation immigrants choose to use her/his birth name within her/his community of co-ethnics and a simplified or more Englishized name to facilitate her/his interactions with others outside of the immigrant community.
Although it is important to keep in mind that a name is often a source of or an impediment to achieving cultural or symbolic capital and economic advancement. Research has shown that if you send out identical résumés to potential employers and one résumé has an ‘ethnic sounding’ African American name and the other has a ‘white-sounding’ name, the candidate with the ‘ethnic sounding’ name is significantly less likely to receive a callback.
The reality of such persistent discrimination is a major factor leading some individuals with ‘ethnic-sounding’ names to use an alternative name when searching for work, networking, or making transactions, etc. Among Latinos this has historically meant that Pedro’s become Peter’s, Maria’s become Mary’s, Juan’s become Juan, etc.
– What kind of a relation does it exist between the person and the new name? Does it create a new identity (different than the one in the home country) to the person?
Again it depends. If a person takes on a new name but uses it only in certain contexts and for purely instrumental reasons, there may be little effect on the person’s sense of self or sense of belonging to a particular group. Like other markers of group identity, names can be used contextually and reflect multiple identities and affiliations.
The use of one or another name may reflect an individual’s negotiation of multiple social spheres and a fluid sense of self. But it general it also depends on just how much a person has invested in the identity linked to a new or adapted name. One’s identity is shaped by a variety of different factors ranging from the quantity and quality of relationships with diverse others; to the language(s) that one speaks, to the time and effort one spends in cultivating an identity. A name is just one factor among many that shape an identity.