For John, BLUF: Is there any child, growing up, who doesn't question his or her name, hair texture, height, eye color or some other trait? Nothing to see here; just move along.
Here is the sub-headline:
So I chose a new one.
From The New Yorker, by Author Beth Nguyen, 1 April 2021.
Here is the lede plus one:
People have always told me not to change my name. Some insisted that they liked it: Bich, a Vietnamese name, given to me in Saigon, where I was born and where the name is quite ordinary. When my family named me, they didn’t know that we would become refugees eight months later and that I would grow up in Michigan in the nineteen-eighties, in the conservative, mostly white, west side of the state, where girls had names like Jennifer, Amy, and Stacy. A name like Bich (pronounced “Bic”) didn’t just make me stand out—it made me miserably visible. “Your name is what?” people would ask. “How do you spell that?” Sometimes they would laugh in my face. “You know what your name looks like, right? Did your parents really name you that?”
I have always envied Asian kids whose parents let them change their names or have separate “American” names. Phuoc at home could be Phil at school. But my parents refused to let me change my name. They said that I should be proud of who I was, and they weren’t wrong, but they were so angry about it that I knew I should keep my worries to myself. I didn’t want to reject my family’s Vietnamese culture, replacing it with all that TV commercials promised. And so I stuck with Bich, or let it stick with me.
I sympathize with Ms Nguyen. Having a non-standard name is a burden. Growing up, before high school, kids would mimic my name, saying "Hi, I'm Cliff; drop over some time". I was stationed at Clark Air Base in the early 1980s and the senior NCO at Base Operations eschewed his first name, Clifford, saying in his part of Pennsylania Clifford is a girl's name. I have never fully settled into my name, sometimes using Cliff and sometimes using Clifford and sometimes my initials, CRK.♠
I wonder to what degree this is a major issue for Ms Nguyen. She doesn't mention moving to Canada. She doesn't mention returning to Viet-nam. She does mention anti-Asian discrimination. She doesn't mention the split between Cambodians and Viet-namese. She doesn't mention the Hmong People.
I feel for Ms Nguyen, but, as Rick says to Ilsa, "It doesn't take much to see that the problems of three little people don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world." Beth Nguyen is a lucky woman, with two kids, I presume, a husband, and a flourishing literary career. And the ability to write interesting short pieces.
Regards — Cliff
♠ My Wife dislikes, actually, hates her name. I try not to use it.
