names

Names are a funny thing; I'm a pretty firm believer in them. If you want to change your name, I'll try my best to remember and call you by the new one. (Right, Marcella?) But if you want to adopt a kid from a foreign country and want to change her/his name, I'm not so hip on that one. I might use the new name. Sometimes.

Name-changing happens all the time and with the numbers of children that we have seen with Western folks lately, the sheer volume of children being adopted out of Viet Nam is staggering. Just yesterday, we saw at least 8 children, 4 of them babies. Most, if not all, of them have new names, I'm quite sure. I've stopped and talked with quite a few of the adoptive parents I've seen, compelled by our work at the orphanages in Tam Ky, and when asked for the child's name, all have given me Western names. Often prefaced by, "We've named him... " But he had a name.

Why does everything that the kid ever knew have to change? New people, new home, new foods, new clothes. Let the kid keep something, something that makes her who she is. If people find it a difficult name to pronounce, so be it. Let her decide when she's 6 and wants to be called Sarah, that you'll do it. Or maybe she doesn't care if Thuong is difficult for Westerners. It's still her name.

I didn't care about this sort of thing before. Now, it sits near the forefront of my thought.

My classes at Hong Duc University were given Western names by the last teacher. There's Avery, Emma, Diego, Marguerite, Jenny, Victoria, Stephanie, etc. Oh yeah, and Skywalker. 46 names in all. The intermediate class, when asked, wanted to be called by their real names, their hard-for-me-to-pronounce Vietnamese names. I can't say but a couple of them correctly. They are close enough to correct that they understand what I mean. Just as I respond to Talisa and Audrey gets called Andree and Stuart has learned to turn when he hears "Stut."

But there are some of the students who want to be called by their Western names and, for some reason, I have the hardest time doing so. Skywalker, in particular, wants me to use that name instead of Tung. But I can't say it without laughing, so it's a half-and-half sort of thing with his name. Now I'm trying to memorize two names for everyone because I can't keep it straight, who wants to be called what.

I'd like to get past the pointing (though not with just one finger!) and call them all by their choice of name. I've got about half of them down now. Give me another week for the rest, then I'll start trying to match Vietnamese with their assigned Western names. But only if they request it. Otherwise, their real name is quite good enough for me.