What’s in a name
For the last thirty plus years I have had my name arranged as English-first-name Chinese-middle-name English-last-name, and for the most part the middle name is either skipped or initialized so it very rarely would come up.
When I first started blogging in 2004 I gave a short explanation of the source my English name:
About the name, I was English major in college in China and as a tradition every English student adopted an English name — you don’t expect an American professor to remember 20 Chinese names, we all look alike which is troublesome enough. Vivian is one of the characters in Sidney Sheldon’s novel Bloodline. I like the sound of the name, I didn’t care much about anything else about the character. Interestingly enough, in the book the character’s husband is named Alec. Later when my mom decided to choose an English name for my brother, he became Alec. When I came to this country after college, the nice lady at DMV advised me that it’d be easier for everyone if I could just put my English name as first name, Chinese name as middle name, like most Chinese do when they arrive here, so that’s what I did. Two short years later I got married and adopted a new last name. I, the Chinese girl, completely vanished.
The last name Keys was from Bill’s Cherokee side of the family. Bill’s ancestors and extended family was a large Shotpouch family with some levels of prominence in the Cherokee Nation. One of his cousins is still a longtime tribal council member. At some point in the last two hundred years some guy decided to adopt a real English name (maybe the guy was adopted by an English family, it never got clear on that), so this branch of family abandoned the Cherokee sounding name, Shotpouch, and became Keys. Once they moved to California the English names helped them blend in with the Bay Area and Silicon Valley crowd, much like immigrants like myself Americanized our names for easy blending.
I’ve always liked my combined English name, simple, easy to pronounce, easy to spell, easy on the eyes (I like the ups and downs and dotting the i’s). Chinese names always have actual meanings, and I like my English name that way too.
This didn’t come without trouble though. When we got married I was working in a Chinese company and being Chinese mattered at work. After the first joint tax filing, which Bill did, in my married name, I was ordered to change my name on my social security card. I followed the order, assuming I’d follow the tradition and it’s also an important step to getting my green card and US citizenship. I thought I’d keep my Chinese name professionally to maintain my Chinese identity.
When I was ready to change job a year later I asked Bill to help me with my resume. First thing he did was to change the last name. I protested that no one would know I’m Chinese. He pointed out my education on the bottom of the page, saying everyone would know from that. Well the name was changed, and everyone did not just know I’m Chinese by looking at my education. People got confused. People asked me if that’s a study abroad thing, what’s my real degree.
After the divorce I debated if I’d change the last name, but didn’t want to change back to my Chinese last name, which sounds downright foreign by now. Last year Bill decided to change his own last name back to Shotpouch, leaving Henry and I sharing the same legal name, which is just fine to me.
