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Why do Chinese change their original names to English names in the USA? Is it not losing their Chinese identity?

Short answer: because people will pronounce it slightly differently than they are supposed to and end up drastically changing the meaning of it.

Long answer:

As much as I like original name and have made several attempts at keeping it when I’m hanging out with my non-Chinese speaking friends, I have concluded that in the case of most Chinese people, this will not be practical.

Chinese is a tonal language. Every character has a fixed tone when you pronounce it, which is something that simply doesn’t exist in the vast majority of other languages. It is as hard, if not harder, for them to perceive the difference in tones and pronounce them consistently correctly as it is for me to roll my rs when I have never needed to use that specific pronunciation in my life. I have met expats who lived in China for more than a decade and are fluent in Chinese in every other way except for tones.

Now, with the help of context, Chinese is understandable even though tones get messed up. However, names are a bit more special. It is the thing that people know you as, they are very short, and there’s never any context on which characters they actually are. So when you mess up the tones, things get really fucked up.

My name is 佳希, pronounced Jiāxī (both first tones). 佳 is like a fancy word for good, and 希 means hope. So my name essentially means “good hope”, which is nice. However, a lot of my American friends, when they try to pronounce it, they end up saying Jiăxì (third tone and fourth tone), which always reminds me of a word that is a lot less flattering - 假戏, meaning “fake drama”.

David Perales писал(а): 21 сен 2022, 00:34

Why do Chinese change their original names to English names in the USA? Is it not losing their Chinese identity?

Short answer: because people will pronounce it slightly differently than they are supposed to and end up drastically changing the meaning of it.

Long answer:

As much as I like original name and have made several attempts at keeping it when I’m hanging out with my non-Chinese speaking friends, I have concluded that in the case of most Chinese people, this will not be practical.

Chinese is a tonal language. Every character has a fixed tone when you pronounce it, which is something that simply doesn’t exist in the vast majority of other languages. It is as hard, if not harder, for them to perceive the difference in tones and pronounce them consistently correctly as it is for me to roll my rs when I have never needed to use that specific pronunciation in my life. I have met expats who lived in China for more than a decade and are fluent in Chinese in every other way except for tones.

Now, with the help of context, Chinese is understandable even though tones get messed up. However, names are a bit more special. It is the thing that people know you as, they are very short, and there’s never any context on which characters they actually are. So when you mess up the tones, things get really fucked up.

My name is 佳希, pronounced Jiāxī (both first tones). 佳 is like a fancy word for good, and 希 means hope. So my name essentially means “good hope”, which is nice. However, a lot of my American friends, when they try to pronounce it, they end up saying Jiăxì (third tone and fourth tone), which always reminds me of a word that is a lot less flattering - 假戏, meaning “fake drama”.

Посыл думаю поймешь.

David Perales писал(а): 21 сен 2022, 00:44 Да, ник лучше сменить.