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Do you have some context about when a Chinese person uses their English name ? e.g. do their friends call it them, is it only for when they interact with Wester

Do you have some context about when a Chinese person uses their English name ? e.g. do their friends call it them, is it only for when they interact with Western websites, etc.

jmknoll 10y ago
It depends on the person. Some will use it as basically a replacement for their actual name, others will use for only for business with people who can't speak Chinese. Interestingly, there doesn't seem to be as strong a correlation as you'd expect between a person's use of an English name and their command of the English language. I used to work for a startup in Shanghai where no one spoke a word of English, except for the English names of the other employees. Office chatter was entirely Chinese, with a sprinkling of "Tony", "Leon", and "Francis." At the other extreme, I had a friend who was from Chongqing, but grew up and went to school in the west, who refused to take an English name at all because she didn't see the value in going by a fake name to all her friends.* However, by her own description, this was somewhat unusual, as it meant that people called her by her full given name all the time. And according to her (this could be wrong, I'm just repeating it, and its hard for me to verify as I'm not Chinese), Chinese people generally address each other by some kind of nickname. So bringing it full circle, an English name is not only kind of cool, but doubles as a nickname, which was already a part of the culture anyway. *I can see the merit in this. If you're going to befriend someone, especially someone of a different cultural background, telling him/her your name is basically the first chance you get to introduce them to your culture and language. But I digress.
- amyjess 10y ago
  > At the other extreme, I had a friend who was from Chongqing, but grew up and went to school in the west, who refused to take an English name at all because she didn't see the value in going by a fake name to all her friends. Interestingly enough, an old friend of mine was the opposite. She's from China, came to the US when she was in sixth grade (she's still here), and I met her in high school. At the time, she mostly used her Chinese name. She only used her English name a little bit and never in class. She graduated a year before I did, we lost contact (this was before social media was a thing), and then a few years later, when Facebook became a thing, we found out we were going to the same college, so we reconnected. The first time I talked to her after that, I called her by her Chinese name, just because that was what I knew her by. She laughed and said she hasn't heard that name since high school. Turns out she dropped her Chinese name like a hot potato as soon as she graduated and has been using her English name exclusively since. I haven't called her by her Chinese name since. As an aside: much later, she got married, and she took her husband's last name, which is a western practice that isn't done in China, which really sums up how much she considers herself American. I never asked, but I get the impression that she felt that all parts of her birth name just othered her and she couldn't wait to get rid of it.
- Accacin 10y ago
  The Chinese people I know mostly say they took the names so we wouldn't butcher their Chinese names. My wife for example has a name in Chinese that's simple for English speakers to say, so she never took a "proper" English name.

Do you have some context about when a Chinese person uses their English name ? e.g. do their friends call it them, is it only for when they interact with Western websites, etc.

jmknoll 10y ago

It depends on the person. Some will use it as basically a replacement for their actual name, others will use for only for business with people who can't speak Chinese. Interestingly, there doesn't seem to be as strong a correlation as you'd expect between a person's use of an English name and their command of the English language. I used to work for a startup in Shanghai where no one spoke a word of English, except for the English names of the other employees. Office chatter was entirely Chinese, with a sprinkling of "Tony", "Leon", and "Francis." At the other extreme, I had a friend who was from Chongqing, but grew up and went to school in the west, who refused to take an English name at all because she didn't see the value in going by a fake name to all her friends.* However, by her own description, this was somewhat unusual, as it meant that people called her by her full given name all the time. And according to her (this could be wrong, I'm just repeating it, and its hard for me to verify as I'm not Chinese), Chinese people generally address each other by some kind of nickname. So bringing it full circle, an English name is not only kind of cool, but doubles as a nickname, which was already a part of the culture anyway. *I can see the merit in this. If you're going to befriend someone, especially someone of a different cultural background, telling him/her your name is basically the first chance you get to introduce them to your culture and language. But I digress.

amyjess 10y ago
> At the other extreme, I had a friend who was from Chongqing, but grew up and went to school in the west, who refused to take an English name at all because she didn't see the value in going by a fake name to all her friends. Interestingly enough, an old friend of mine was the opposite. She's from China, came to the US when she was in sixth grade (she's still here), and I met her in high school. At the time, she mostly used her Chinese name. She only used her English name a little bit and never in class. She graduated a year before I did, we lost contact (this was before social media was a thing), and then a few years later, when Facebook became a thing, we found out we were going to the same college, so we reconnected. The first time I talked to her after that, I called her by her Chinese name, just because that was what I knew her by. She laughed and said she hasn't heard that name since high school. Turns out she dropped her Chinese name like a hot potato as soon as she graduated and has been using her English name exclusively since. I haven't called her by her Chinese name since. As an aside: much later, she got married, and she took her husband's last name, which is a western practice that isn't done in China, which really sums up how much she considers herself American. I never asked, but I get the impression that she felt that all parts of her birth name just othered her and she couldn't wait to get rid of it.
Accacin 10y ago
The Chinese people I know mostly say they took the names so we wouldn't butcher their Chinese names. My wife for example has a name in Chinese that's simple for English speakers to say, so she never took a "proper" English name.