The Lighter Side of China: English Names & The Chinese

I remember with great detail the moment I was given a Chinese name. It was more than 20 years ago, I had just arrived in Asia, and the first thing my Taiwanese staff did was to give me a moniker that would represent me in China. I was named Ke Ing De, 柯颖德, which loosely translates as “clever and of good moral character.” I immediately sent a note to everyone I knew back in the West introducing my new self.

Walking tall with my new distinction, I was convinced I was one step closer to the Chinese world. I sought to understand everything about the Chinese and became fixated on the English names the Chinese gave themselves. I wondered why a colleague in our advertising office would call himself "Billboard" Kwok. Or why my slightly heavyweight boss called himself "Beef" Chen. Or why the advertising creative team donned such names as "Jesus" Yeh and "Devil" Zhou , and in case you had a question, you could ask for the Creative Director, "If" Chen. I was fascinated by the fact the Chinese selected names from almost every month and season of the year. Quite literally in my company we have or have had an "Autumn" Guo, “Spring” Cui, "Summer" Sun, "Winter" Xia, as well as a "February" Lee, "March" Chung, "April" Fan, "May" Liu, "June" Dong, "July" Guo, "September" Li and in case we forgot anything, a "Remember" Zhu. We have a “Phat” Song, who is a bit overweight but as cool as anyone I have met in China. We have a former colleague (who is a client), very smart and quick, by the name of "Running" Xie. And we even had staff and clients with such rhyming names as Lili Li and Didi Di.

One particular difficulty I had involved working for a client with our team composed of "May", "June" and "Spring". I remember working on one campaign that was due in the spring, around May or June, that required detailed follow-up actions by the team of May, June and Spring. By the end of the planning meeting we were so confused and dizzy that it became a source of great comedy for future meetings.

Understanding the naming process became an obsession for me. Thirty years ago, standing out in a crowd was not recommended in China, and maybe even scorned. However, with China’s opening up in the '80s, people were beginning to express individualism in greater numbers and worked to find their point of difference. Marketers say that the exponential growth of luxury items in China is a result of the Chinese associating with brands that say something about themselves. Self-identity is a familiar topic now and this can be seen in many corners of modern China.

For those who wonder where these names come from, there are a variety of influences. One staffer told me he chose "Autumn" because that is when he was born, and is generally a "fruitful and successful" time of the year. "Winter" told me that his English name is a direct translation of his first name, Dong. "Phat" got his name from chatting with a bunch of laowai 12 years earlier in a bar, who explained "Phat" was slang for being cool. "I loved the double meaning because I am really fat," he explained. "Running" chose her name because she liked the "running mode. I like to keep the pace. No need to be fast. Just be steady." Yet, overwhelmingly, many of our staff with descriptive or different names told me that they had an English teacher in their youth, who had suggested they consider a name of a different nature.

All I can say is that there are many creative English teachers out there. I would like to meet the folks who gave our knowledge manager her name, "Shooting" Li. (Fortunately she has a lot of patience.) Or the teachers who named our talent manager "Psyche" Tian, and our finance staffer, "Cookie" Wang. This makes dealing with our HR department a bit scary, but working with our finance folks much more palatable.

In looking deeper into the English names of my colleagues, I was particularly curious about our creative team, as this department is usually the wackiest in our company. I was delighted to find a "Chocolate" Huang, "Popeye" Li and "Rocky" Ren. I have visions of both delight and terror in having to work with these folks. In PR, I often call on our team member "Mars" Li when we want a big idea, and "Ice" Liang to bring her back down to earth. We have our share of staff who have acquired names of fantasy characters as well. Among my favorites are the beautiful "Ariel" Zhang, and our talented digital creative team member "Robin" Hu.

If you want a tasty campaign, you can ask for "Apple" Guo and "Elvis" Xu in our consulting team to serve you. If you have trouble counting, don't worry, we have our folks “Eleven” Li and "Twelve" Tang to help you. Ironically, our fastest-growing business is run by "Pope" Li, who has "Morning" Cao, "Chairs" Chen and even a "Shakira" Huang working in his office. After studying their business model, I am told they sit down with clients in the AM, pray and perform.

My favorite, though, and I am not making this up, came when I was trying to get some money out of our Finance department recently. As finance departments go, we have a very good team at Ogilvy that protects the company from abuse. This makes getting quick cash advances and other money often difficult and at times slow. In a rush I put in a request and was told that I would need to reach out to the new assistant to our CFO, "Pray" Chen.* Need I say more?

*For those that don’t speak Chinese, Chen sounds like the 钱 (qian), the word for money.

Scott Kronick is president of Ogilvy Public Relations Worldwide, North Asia.

Image:TucanSamIsCool

Comments

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charliedontsurf wrote:
I don't think laowai are much better at picking Chinese names. I have have seen more than one dumb foreigner to pick "Doufu" as their moniker (most likely because those are among the few Chinese words they know). I chose for my name 王义力. It's easy to write and the two characters mean "justice" and "force, ability" but my girlfriend says that when you stick them together it just sounds like the name of a brand of sausage. So I guess I'm just 王义 now.

agree. hahahahahaha
met a young guy before named himself as 金牛奶 which I totally didn't get what connection he had with milk. he explained he just liked the pronunciation of niunai.
And another interesting Greek man introduced his chinese name was 小狗

in Beijing doldrums

My last realtor was named Handsome Dragon. No, he was not the least bit handsome.

Tiffany Wang
Style & Living Editor, the Beijinger

I don't think laowai are much better at picking Chinese names. I have have seen more than one dumb foreigner to pick "Doufu" as their moniker (most likely because those are among the few Chinese words they know). I chose for my name 王义力. It's easy to write and the two characters mean "justice" and "force, ability" but my girlfriend says that when you stick them together it just sounds like the name of a brand of sausage. So I guess I'm just 王义 now.

At university there was a Waycle, Onion and J-Son. My curent favourite is Wyatt Anderson. Best chosen name ever.

Jonathan White, Managing Editor the Beijinger/TheBeijinger.com

I had a friend whose student decided to call himself Pubert.

Some names I have known:

Saddam
Tory
Lolita*
Harry Potter
Nokia
Fancy
Juicy
Handmod

*She was a university student of mine. I explained that this name had different meanings now, and she said "I know! I love the book!"

'Boss' and 'Queenie' strike me as unusual chosen names

Books by current and former Beijinger staffers

http://astore.amazon.com/truerunmedia-20

In my time in China I've met amongst others a 'Mouse', an 'Iceman', a 'Box', a 'Success' and an 'Eyes'. I think Iain S's 'Never say Die' pips it for me though, that's brilliant!

Most of the "names" mentioned in the article were never heard of before my reading it.

I shall congratulate you for having all sorts of trivia names around, while bearing in mind that they are hardly "names," but in fact a rather catchy way of calling when summoned,in which both parties would enjoy more during the process.

When International Relations meet Jane Austen.

Love it!

When I was at university, my Chinese teacher told me that she picked her English name during her first exchange program assignment when she came over on a teacher exchange.

Similar to how Chinese names are chosen (by Chinese people), she based her choice on how 好听 (pleasant to the ear) the name was and then the meaning. She wound up with "Fountain." In fairness to her, it is a lovely sounding word.

When I taught English, there was one class with three students who called themselves Washington, Nixon and Bush;

In other classes I taught Genius, Beckham, Devil, Hunter and Lemon.

Then there were Village Head and Never Say Die ...

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I'm a chinese. As I recall,having an english name was always fine.I had my first english name in my first english class ever at the age 8,by picking up blindly from a big box filled with cards having english names on. And now this is still a trend even seen in kindergarden.Well....

why not?

just a few names i've run across in beijing:

Lucifer: used by the most beautiful female student i've ever seen..

Golden Boy: Now GB (as he said i could call him) was a middle-aged, run of the mill office worker.. i dont think he knew the name was ironic though

Inside the rain: Yes, everytime i wanted to call on him I'd actually say, 'so, inside the rain, what do you think?'

..and lastly, my best friend and i once at the same time had girfriends named Rainy and Sunny

There used to be a “Snowy Guo” from O&M … I found her on another site and she was in the old phone list …

When i came to register at the university, they asked me for my Chinese name. As someone who just arrived China 2 days ago i had no idea of Chinese names... So (under pressure of 50 people queuing behind me) i thought of the most famous Chinese that i know and decided to adopt his name "Bruce Lee". So my name was localized to Dan LI --> LI Dan (Dan is my private name that i wanted to keep). After being glad that i have a Chinese name, my Chinese classmates told me that it is actually girls name...
But i still like it Smile

Assumption is the mother of all mistakes

My favorite was in the first class I taught, twelve years ago. All the students wanted to choose English names, and I, in my innocence, told them to go ahead. At the end of the class the list of English names came back to me with "Toilet", "Fairy", "Witch", and "Panasonic", to name a few.

The next day Panasonic came to me and asked if he could change his name. When I agreed and handed him the list, he crossed out "Panasonic" and wrote "Savage Garden".

Doubt wisely; in strange way / To stand inquiring right is not to stray; / To sleep, or run wrong, is. (Donne, Satire III)

Oh, I think you missed some of the better names. I've had students named:
Shrek, Watermelon, Bunny, Nevermore, Lionel Messi, and, unfortunately, Nazi. Among other classes were PeePee and Deceptacon.
What I'm curious to know, is why do many students choose animal or food names?