Dear Editor,
I am an overseas Chinese living in New Zealand. Sinorama has been an excellent companion to me for many years. I had an especially strong feeling on reading the letter to the editor in the January 1998 edition entitled "Getting Names Right."
I feel that one can only grasp the special significance of a Chinese name if it is written in the form of Chinese characters. Most Westerners have little understanding of Chinese culture. For them, a Chinese name written in a Western alphabet is simply a name that is somewhat more difficult to pronounce or remember. What's more, they cannot distinguish between the given name and the surname.
When I first came to New Zealand, even when people didn't get my surname and first name turned around, they were unable to spell my name correctly anyway, often resulting in ridiculous situations. Eventually, I reluctantly adapted myself to the local custom, adopting an English first name and putting my given name in front of my surname. This has since saved me a lot of trouble.
In fact, today many non-Chinese who come to China also take the idea "when in Rome do as the Romans do" to heart. I used to work in a multinational company in mainland China. All of the foreign employees in the company, whether they were from England, the US, France, or even India, had Chinese names. On documents written in Chinese, they would invariably sign their Chinese names, which was a nice gesture. I remember that the last British governor of Hong Kong, Chris Patton, adopted the Chinese name of Peng Dingkang. I never heard of the British government criticizing him for damaging the nation's integrity, or for abandoning British culture.
Although Chinese people have a saying that one should remain true to one's name, historically Chinese have had many names. They have had given names, surnames, literary names (zi), characteristic names (hao), and even nicknames. Among contemporary Chinese, few people have zi or hao because, after all, times do change. Today, with Eastern and Western cultures more frequently interacting, what's wrong with having a Chinese name and also a Western name? On the other hand, when a person does choose an English name (like "Molly"), it is silly to transliterate it back into Chinese (say, "Ma-li") for situations requiring a Chinese name.
Although I live in an English-speaking environment, I still read the Chinese text in Sinorama. I also have Chinese food regularly, to ease my homesickness. As far as I am concerned, just having an English name in no way reduces the importance of Chinese culture in my heart.
