Fun Stuff > CHATTER
What seemed weird when I visited your country
Skewbrow:
--- Quote from: Akima on 03 Jun 2014, 20:31 ---I said my personal name. That is, as opposed to my surname. What you would probably call your first name or Christian name. Yes, of course I have adopted the Western name order for public purposes, living in Australia, but it still feels wrong, and deep inside my "first name" is still my surname. Because, you know, the family is more important than the individual. ;)
--- End quote ---
This may be difficult for us "occidentals" to understand. I hope that your coworkers understand and respect your reasons.
But I wanted to ask you if this is related to what I observed/was told about while I lived in the US. What seemed to happen was that children born to Chinese parents in America were given a "local" name to be used as a first name the way it is locally used. The parents got to pick that name. But another first name (the personal name?) was picked by the extended family/elders/whatnot in China? Based on what you said it sounds like I never learned the true names of the kids born to fellow grad students from China? We called the kid Aaron, because the parents did so :-)
Another thing that puzzles me about this. Is this practice of not disclosing the first names still common in China? My wife has a penpal from Hong Kong. I may be wrong but I think that she is referring to her kids with their personal names in her letters. Would people from Hong Kong have developed different customs in this respect?
Sorflakne:
I thought it was rather odd that instructors at my current college (and even our department head) said it was cool if we referred to them by first name during class time. The oddity of it passed after a few days though.
Method of Madness:
TRVA -I use "no worries" all the time, but "you're fine" seems odd to me.
Toof- I'm 1987, so I "win" bwahahahahaha
Akima:
--- Quote from: Method of Madness on 04 Jun 2014, 05:25 ---Also, I find it depressing when someone says that "x is not my friend" in a context where you don't have a reason to dislike x.
--- End quote ---
For me, friendship is an important relationship, and I like to think that I offer a bit more to my friends than not disliking them. There are many people in the world I don't dislike, and I'm perfectly prepared to be polite to them or smile at them, but they are not friends; they are clients, coworkers, acquaintances, my dentist, random people I meet on railway platforms and so on. Friends are people I care a lot about, and applying the word "friend" to anyone I don't dislike feels to me like devaluing friendship.
--- Quote ---So Akima, do you expect people to call you just by your surname, or do you wish them to add "Ms." in front of it.
--- End quote ---
What I expect is that people will use my "first name", and I accept that as customary in Australia. I would prefer Ms. <surname> in the workplace, but that is a lost cause here. I don't have any problem with being addressed simply by my unadorned surname either, but that is not common in Australia, especially for women, at least in civilian life.
--- Quote from: Skewbrow on 05 Jun 2014, 04:04 ---This may be difficult for us "occidentals" to understand. I hope that your coworkers understand and respect your reasons.
--- End quote ---
They don't have to. At work, and in the "outer world" generally, I go by my "Australian name" given in Western name-order (first name, surname), and co-workers address me by my "Australian" first name. I keep any discomfort to myself; it's part of fitting in my adopted country. As you have observed, it is very common for Chinese-descended people to use a Western first name if they live in Western countries. If they were born in a Western country, their family might well have given them a Western name at birth. Many will be Christian, and will probably have been baptised with a "Christian name". Hong Kong is sort of "between worlds", but there too, the influence of missionaries, British imperialism, and Western influence generally, means that many people use a Western first name, at least to interact with Westerners. This is all much less so in "Mainland" China.
In China, your surname always comes first. Mao Zedong's surname was Mao; his personal name was Zedong. Chinese people do not "not disclose" their personal names, as you put it. The point is that using the personal name by itself is restricted to close friends. Anyone else would either use your full name (surname and personal name together), or your surname and title (with the title coming after the name remember) or possibly just your surname. What bothers me is when people I barely know from a crack in the pavement seem to arrogate to themselves the status of a friend. As I said above, it feels fake, intrusive and manipulative.
Being born in China, I was not given a Western name at birth. I was named in the traditional way, inheriting my family surname from my father, and having my personal name selected by my grandparents. When we moved to Australia, my family obviously had to adopt Western name order, romanized spelling for our names, and English-language "first names". In my case, the two syllables of my Chinese personal name each sound like a common English girl's name, so the school where I was first enrolled wrote them down separately as my first and middle names using English spelling, and that is how I got my Australian name. I'm OK with it, and I made it "official" when I became an Australian citizen.
--- Quote from: Barmymoo on 04 Jun 2014, 14:30 ---Plus there are cultures (Akima, is this the case in China?) where using aunt or uncle is a sign of respect.
--- End quote ---
Yes this is true in China. You would not do it to your boss at work normally, but an older person (generally a generation older) you meet regularly on polite terms might be addressed in this manner once you knew them fairly well. Grandfather and Grandmother are both also terms of respect for addressing unrelated elderly people whose names you do not know.
"No worries!" is the usual form here, for accepting an apology or assuring someone that no apology is necessary.
LTK:
--- Quote from: Method of Madness on 05 Jun 2014, 06:05 ---Toof- I'm 1987, so I "win" bwahahahahaha
--- End quote ---
Well, that just means you started earlier. We won't know who's the winner until one of you finishes the human race.
--- Quote from: Method of Madness on 04 Jun 2014, 05:25 ---Also, I find it depressing when someone says that "x is not my friend" in a context where you don't have a reason to dislike x. Why isn't x your friend? Why can't they be your friend for a little while? Not having everyone be your friend to some degree by default sounds like an awful way to live.
--- End quote ---
What Akima says about this makes total sense but there's still a feeling of meanness to saying "x is not my friend", even if you are friendly towards that person. If someone said that about you, even though it'd be completely true, wouldn't it still just hurt a little bit? It's one of those truths that's better left unspoken.
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
[*] Previous page
Go to full version