kak vaz zavut?

my Russian teacher is a robust lady who likes to talk about crucifying her students if they can't answer her questions, or fail a test. she used to ask, in quite an intimidating way, "Kak vaz zavut?" (what is your name?). though the question itself was easy, people were still afraid of being asked because it often marked the beginning of a whole sequence of graded questions the difficulty of which could only increase. in Hong Kong, i am afraid of being asked the Cantonese version of "kak vaz zavut", because my standard response of "Him" would almost always trigger a much more difficult second question, "Don't you have an European (English) name?", which has never been asked in the US and New Zealand.

the second question is difficult because my negative response would put me into a non-standard category, as non-standard as the German Sheperd cross-breed you now see on your left. his name is "ah Gau", which is literally "dog". when ah Gau, together with his name, was first presented to my colleagues at Otago, he proudly received the "nice name" comment. and from then on everyone knew for sure that he IS a dog. "to name him 'ah Cat' would be the biggest insult ever", commented Brent, a colleague not without a sense of humour.

back to people. i do look around for some correlation between people's names and the implied character. "John" and "Mary" have obviously fallen out of favour, because many HK people unconsciously think only nerds or partial nerds would bear these names. down one step we have "David", "Michael", "Jennifer", "Annie", "Angela", "Helen", and "Peter" and "Edward" perhaps? but still too much of a good-boy-nice-girl image.  how about "Raymond", "Jason", "Kelvin", "Nicole", "Maggie", "Eddie", "Monica", "Kelly", "Ken", "Danny", "Andy", "Cecilia", "Janet", "Paul", "Winnie", "Alex", "Emily", "Kitty", "Gigi", "Mimi", "Dodo", "Didi"........., sounding better now? these constitute the absolute bulk. to go exotic and really special, we have "Pierre", "Racquet", "Porche" (!!!), "Vladimir", "Leonardo", "Bjork". and if you are after big brands, you could call yourself "Chanel" or "Polo". i apologise for misspelling any of these, for they are really not easy.

one step further: a middle name? hence "Mary Jane", "William Bruce", and "Lucia Phoebe".

ultimately, if your family name is "Yeung", you can quietly replace the "e" with an "o"; in the case of "Lau", replace the "u" with a "w". if you think "Tang" is no good, you can do "Dunn". if you have "Lee" as your family name, congratulations, you don't have to change it.

Robert Sternberg, the Yale psychologist, once encouraged me to collaborate with someone from the Peking U, whose family name is transcribed as "He" (Mandarin). I am sure Robert is still awaiting our "He and Him" paper to come out.

speaking of Mandarin, a guy called "Phil", whose accent turns his own name into almost a "fail", and another called "Lin Dan" (doesn't it remind you of the Cantonese "zero egg"?) demonstrate two cute examples of student names. ironically, they are excellent students whom i can't imagine being crucified.

in any case, i hope you enjoy your name.