Of course, Chinese names are sometimes hard for Westerners to pronounce, but people can at least try. Changing your name completely to a standard western name feels to me like giving up part of your cultural identity, just to accomodate lazy Westeners who can't be bothered to learn Chinese names - I realise that this is not necessarily how people who are in that situation actually feel about it, though!
Well... Of course taking on a Western name
does feel like giving up part of your cultural identity, but when you emigrate to another country with an (initially) very alien culture,
that is a standard part of the package. In order just to function effectively in society, or to aspire (however futilely, see the posting before this) to being seen as a fully equal citizen in it, you have to put on your "host-country suit" before you walk out of the front door. Obviously, the longer you've been wearing the suit, and the younger you were when you first put it on, the better the suit fits, but it never entirely stops chafing I think, not least because nobody will ever let you forget you are wearing it. Do I
mind that? Yes I do, but it has to be set against the great advantages my family has gained by emigrating. As we say:
Eat bitter; taste sweet!I don't accuse Westerners who can't or won't pronounce Chinese names correctly of
laziness necessarily, and expecting correct pronunciation is very unrealistic. Considering that even newscasters on national television habitually mispronounce
the name of China's capital city (it is Bay-jing,
not Beige-ing), where is the average person going to learn? The "official" Pinyin romanization system does not help matters. Would you immediately recognise that ZH is pronounced like the hard J at the beginning of jungle, or that Q is pronounced like the CH at the beginning of chintz while CH represents the sound at the beginning of chop, or that C is pronounced TS like the sound in the middle of besT-Seller? All of this requires study, which the average person will probably not have done. The out-of-fashion Yale romanization system works much better for English-speakers (it was designed for the U.S.Army), but would mislead Germans, for example, because the habitual way they pronounce the letter J is different. The interface between Chinese and European languages is simply a very difficult problem even for Standard Mandarin, never mind the regional dialects.
As for the
"Liberal-left, politically-correct, Guardian-reading, twinkly-eyed multi-cultural nirvana"; the notion that it
could exist might be a liberal delusion, but the belief that the only alternative is blank rejection is a fairly extreme conservative one. I do not myself find that my religious, cultural, or dietary practices preclude friendship with people who do not share them.