American Name
I was reminded of a recent conversation amongst our staff by a recent post/topic on Amy's blog. She talked about a former long named classmate and the shortened nickname he was given in school because no one could pronounce his actual name.
It's funny to me how some foreigners come to our country with very cultural names...only to have us give them a nickname. How sad is it that we are so stuck up that we can't put forth an effort to pronounce it correctly?! Example: (I really don't know his story, but) there's a guy on my floor who's name is Chaiwon. The name he goes by at school: Clyde.
We should almost have a station at the immigration office with a sign that says "Get your American name here!" Someone comes over from Thailand, the immigration officer asks him his name, hearing it he says "oooooh...that's not going to work here...which of those six syllables do you like the most? ...Li? Ok, we'll go with that one. Welcome to America!"
It's funny to me how some foreigners come to our country with very cultural names...only to have us give them a nickname. How sad is it that we are so stuck up that we can't put forth an effort to pronounce it correctly?! Example: (I really don't know his story, but) there's a guy on my floor who's name is Chaiwon. The name he goes by at school: Clyde.
We should almost have a station at the immigration office with a sign that says "Get your American name here!" Someone comes over from Thailand, the immigration officer asks him his name, hearing it he says "oooooh...that's not going to work here...which of those six syllables do you like the most? ...Li? Ok, we'll go with that one. Welcome to America!"
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home