Friday, April 3, 2015

Engrish Names

The last couple of times I tried to poke fun at the Engrish I found around me, it turned out that those things were totally legit. See here and here for those. But this time, I have some real Engrish for you! I promise!

Lately, I find myself becoming more and more frustrated with being here. Not just China specifically, but with Asian culture as a whole. No disrespect. It's just hard being a fish out of water. It's hard walking down the street for exercise and seeing elementary-aged children shrieking "foreigner" in Chinese while pointing. It's hard to endure certain tidbits of the cultures (especially my in-laws!), even if there are still things I do find endearing. I just need to go home and I want to before I lose all love for the continent that more or less shaped my 30s.

One thing has always driven me crazy here. And lately, it's making me so nuts I cannot even pretend it doesn't bother the crap out of me.

Engrish names.

What is an Engrish name, you ask? Engrish names are the bane of my existence. As a professional writer and as a paid teacher, when a new student joins our kindergarten and the mom INSISTS on making the Korean name into an Engrish name, it makes me stabby. It is SO hard to smile and politely suggest something else. "No, no. I want to call my kid (insert Korean name spelled phonetically here)." Yes, what a brilliant idea. You want to send your kid to an INTERNATIONAL school and then give them a name that no business associate will ever be able to properly pronounce. Good job.

Last year, I had a lovely little girl named Juily. When the semester had started, I asked my work BFF Jon, who had her the year before, if her name was July. No, Juily. Despite his protests to the mother to spell her name Julie as is traditional, the mom insisted it be spelled this way. Because she's some English expert. Oh, I mean ENGRISH expert. Of course!

I've also had an Anny and Micky. This year in my daughter's class, she has a friend named ReiRei, which is Chinese last I checked. And in Jon's class, he has a boy named Onyu. I once had a Camille, which was fine except that all the Korean teachers had made her name tags say "Carmill." And no one noticed until I came along. *facepalm*

Come to think of it, the Korean and Chinese teachers have been rather entertaining when it comes to labeling the students' things. Like when this happened, for example. Why they don't just ask the English teachers to look it over first is beyond me. I'd rather stop them from making an Engrish mistake before it shows up in print. Sadly, no matter how many times I offer my assistance, I will always find something like this...
In Jon's class, I can tell you he has a darling little boy by the name of Philip. Not a darling little boy named "Philp." His name is spelled correctly on everything else. This is what happens when the school decides to make my poor Korean director in charge of teaching Korean to Jon's class AND my class. She had no choice but to siphon the task of name tags off onto the Chinese teachers, who are all lovely people but not English experts in the slightest.

Just below "Philp," you can see "Juile." Which SHOULD be Julie. This year, we have a REAL Julie. Again, her name is correct on everything else. This is not a crazy mom issue. This is a typo. Thankfully, Bonnie there is spelled properly but I'll be damned if I can't get these people to stop calling her "boney."

7 comments:

  1. The poor spelling and pronunciation are one issue, but aside from the Engrish names you also disapprove of students using their actual Korean name and spelling it phonetically, because English speakers can't pronounce them? Why does the rest of the world have to cater to the comfort of monolingual English speakers?

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    1. Because it's good business. When I lived in Korea, I had a Korean name I'd use. My husband gave me a Chinese name when we moved here. And when these little darlings go off into the world, if they move to the US, Canada, Australia or other primarily English-speaking countries, they will find that if their resume says "Ann Cho" for example instead of "Soojin Cho" that they are much more likely to get consideration. It's not something I've made up. I read about this topic quite recently though can't recall where I found it. I know one of the articles I read about was a Hispanic guy in America who changed his name from "Jose" to "Joe" and suddenly was getting calls back on his resume. Is it fair? No, of course not. But until that changes you better believe my husband's name on his resume is listed as "Jeremy."

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  2. Oh people giving weird names, especially English ones is really amusing sometimes. WOrse it gets when Chinese move to Finland, marry a Finnish person as descide to give them a Finnish name...oh wait, not Finnish but some perverted form of it. We have two friends who did that to their child and one even gave her Chinese family name as a second name to the girl...

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    1. Not being familiar with a typical Finnish name, can you give an example of this? What does your wife think of these oddball names?

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    2. Typical Finnish names are like, Jarkko, Leena, Mikko, Antti, Elvi, Satu and then the Those people come who just take some chinese and form it into something which might somehow resemble a Finnish name such as Meini for example.

      My wife also was surprised why people would do that...

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  3. Go to today's Shanghaiist, and you can read about a smart woman who has monetized this problem. She runs a website which helps Chinese people pick reasonable English names. She's earning about $1000 a day. Now why didn't I think of that?!!!

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    1. I saw. I hate myself for not thinking of it myself as well. Maybe we could be her competition? LOL!

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