Just Change It?

[littlebitca]

A week or so ago you may recall a news item about a Texas State Representative who suggested that Asian-Americans should change their names because they're too hard to pronounce and came under some major outrage and mockery for this.

The irony, it burns.

Comments

[scrollgirl.livejournal.com]

Wow, I couldn't imagine losing my name. Our dad named all three of us kids, and my sister's is fairly unique-- at least, I've never run across another person with it. The characters themselves aren't too obscure, though.

I personally find English made-up names fairly atrocious (Rayvyn??) but Chinese parents put a LOT of thought and research into giving their kids unique names. I'd hate for us as a culture to lose that part of our identity. Conform or be undocumented.

[atpolittlebit.livejournal.com]

I found it astonishing that the solution was to tell people to change their names -- order, really, because I suspect that ID card is mandatory -- rather than putting the rest of the characters into the database. They used less than 60%? I can only imagine deciding to simplify English names by only using 16 letters.

[lakrids404.livejournal.com]

Not so strange seen from an danish perspective. In Denmark there is a naming law, and under there is a list of small 20.000 surnames who is legal. You can get an name, who is not on list, if you can document, that it's used in other countries.

[cactuswatcher.livejournal.com]

Back 150 years ago when one of my ancestor families arrived from Germany, all of three of their daughters were named Anna Maria Elizabeth. Of course each was known by one of those. What they would have done if they'd had another daughter, who knows. These days that kind of naming would drive the census people nuts. ;o)