As an immigrant, I had the opportunity to be heard as to my chosen English first name. Well, not initially. A non-English speaker at the tender age of 6, I remember standing in the social security registration line with my mother. “We’re going to call you Sing,” she said in Mandarin. “That way it sounds kind of like the middle character of your Chinese name. Is that okay? You like that name?” I really had no opinion as to the name. The English sound “Sing” was unfamiliar to me, so I just agreed. And so, that’s how I was registered in this country. Some days later, in the waiting room of a doctor’s office (I think I was there to be immunized), my mother and aunt Jessica were discussing my translated name. My aunt asked if I liked it. I again nodded, simply because I didn’t have an opinion. She then told me what “Sing” meant. Dude, it wasn’t even a noun! It was a verb! I protested the name then. Like that mattered. The full translation of my Chinese name into the registered legal English version isn’t even something I can pronounce to this day.

Apparently it wasn’t something a lot of people could pronounce. First through second grade, the name just became ammunition for me to be teased. As if kids pulling their eyelids out into narrow slants and saying to me, “ching chong chang chone” and throwing sand at my face weren’t enough. Now they could encircle me and chant, “Sing…sing a song…sing along…” which I guess was a popular song on the radio that year, unfortunately for me. I don’t remember what kind of a fuss I made regarding my name, except that whatever I did, my mom finally agreed to give me an a.k.a. to use in school aside from my legal translated “English” name, the full thing of which I haven’t told you guys and which the teachers struggled to say when calling roll. My mom suggested “Jean,” because that sounded somewhat like the 3rd character in my Chinese name. I readily agreed to that. Finally, a real name! One which didn’t have a dictionary definition! My mother wrote a note to my 2nd grade teacher, informing her of the name change and asking her to please start referring to me as Jean immediately. My teacher made a brief announcement of my name in front of the class (to the bewilderment of the American students, to whom a name change was unheard of), and good-naturedly started calling me Jean. It wasn’t a few weeks later when my family was having dinner with some family friends, and the 2 sons of the other families started making fun of my name. “Jing” in Mandarin means “near,” or “closeness.” The boys said, “Jing. Ta lee wo hun jing.” Roughly translated: “Near. She is very near to me.” And guffawed. The rest of the evening consisted of them making up sentences with “jing.”

The next school day, I handed another note from my mother to my 2nd grade teacher. Miss Lawrence cooperatively started referring to me as Cindy, which I’d picked myself out of a dictionary.

***
Some years ago, I briefly dated a Chinese guy named Arlington. Asian immigrants are kind of known for naming their kids the last names of prestigious (at least prestigous-sounding) Americans, so I wasn’t too weirded out by Arlington. I’d already known a Jackson, a Nelson, a couple of Wilsons, an Edison, and a Rockefeller. (Just kidding about the Rockefeller. There’s probably at least one out there, but I don’t know any.) But I thought I’d ask the origin of his name anyway. He told me that his mother didn’t have a name for him until she was in the delivery room of the hospital. After he was delivered, she asked the doctor to help name him. Her only requirements? The name must start with the letter A because she was in Delivery Room A, and it should sound similar to her other son’s name. The doctor came up with Arlington.

“What’s your brother’s name?” I asked. I mean, what the heck sounds like Arlington?

Apparently, Wellington.

Oh, he also has a younger sister. Her name is Joyce. Joycington? No, just Joyce.

***
Okay, I’ve shared. What’s the origin of your name?