On the subject of Asians adopting Western names when I was growing up my mom gave me the opportunity to change my name but I decided to keep it even though it did cause me trouble in school. My name is my name and I don't feel obligated to change it for someone else's convenience anymore than I would to get plastic surgery for someone who finds an Asian face unusual. The one concession I've made is that I've changed the pronounciation of it to match phonetically how it is spelled. That has caused some confusion as when I was born my parents English wasn't that good and they took a shot at how the Mandarin sounds would be transliterated in English. Needless to say my name doesn't match the Wade Giles or Pinyin transliteration system of Chinese characters and by coincindence my name is the same as a Nepali name. I thought about adopting the Pinyin English transliteration of the characters at one point but my name is my name even if it was somewhat accidental. Back on topic as far as making a concession to the American English pronounciation that is more than the Siobhans or Mike Kryzyzewskis of the world can say and I suspect Rep. Brown doesn't have Gaelic or Eastern European names in mind regarding difficult pronounciations.
Your reason can't be more moronic. 90% of people in China can't even pronounce all the 26 English alphabets. So there is actually a 'need' that the names of the foreigners over there have to be translated to Chinese. I don't think foreigners in China want to go around without anyone being able to pronounce their names. Do you? Can you even imagine how difficult it would be for their daily life? Just imagine what happen when they try to get a driver's license but the lady works at the counter can't even pronounce their name because it is in English. Think. But here in the US, the Asians do have their name in English already. Yes Truong (my last name) is an ethical Vietnamese but it is written in English alphabets already. So it is not like people can't even pronounce my name. Can you see the difference now?
False, and racist. (nationalist? not sure) your reasoning for the name changes is PRC is false. The reason for the name change is because it needs to be a character. Getting an ID or anything requires it to be in chinese (duh) It has nothing to do with pronunciation. It is not english. For chinese, they use pinyin and pinyin does not use english alphabet, it uses it's own.
Why? What's the difficulty of identifying Asian names for voting purpose? Is there any articulable difficulties? This is just an assertion. Wow, just wow. Aren't Asian Americans American. If this is wasn't about race, then I don't what is about race.
Its not a new name its an approximation of the foreign name to Chinese sounds. The meaning of the characters is ignored in context. Its not like Bonzi Wells has a new official Chinese name playing in the PRC. They approximate his name to the characters and whenever his name is displayed in Roman Alphabet or in the PRC English language media it is spelled "Bonzi Wells"
For voting it makes no sense at all. You do not need to pronounce the name at all to verify it for ID. Out of curiosity I see your point about the use of the word americans but how do you distinguish the typical american named person who was born here from others? I know among chinese the term ABC is popular (american born chinese) but possibly offensive. Is the correct term just non-immigrant? non-immigrant has a kind of legal meaning so that isn't good i believe.
But if you read what I posted you would know that there are not chinese characters that make sense and sound the same. So they just put characters in there with meanings that fit. Mei3guo2 (美国) is how america is fit to the english sound. It barely sounds the same at all but the characters mean beautiful country.
This is not much better than having them change their names. If you want to do it that way, it has to be applied equally to every race, not just Asians. You are a racist. We all are.
Wow, it's a shame that some of you call yourself a more authentic Americans than others, and don't know your Constitution. 14h Amendment The citizenship, privilege and immunities, due process, and equal protection clause do not make distinction among citizens of United State black, white or Asian. Further, the constitutional due process and equal protection protection extend to all persons, not just US citizens.
I could be wrong (going on google research), but don't we do the same thing here? If Chinese people are speaking about China in Chinese, it's not called anything similar to "China", right? We just named it "China" in the western world even though it sounds nothing like what they call it (zhong guo). http://www.standardmandarin.com/chinesephrases/China
And we call China "China" even though the transliterated characters in English sound like "Zhong Guo" and mean Middle State / Kingdom. The names of countries aren't the same as the name of an immigrant coming to work in the country as often those names precede the existence of whatever the current government is. I have yet to hear of a foriegner in the PRC given a new name that isn't an attempt to transliterate it or in the case of Japanese names where the Kanji characters are the same the pronounciation is done in Mandarin.
How do you distinguish someone named "Cian Connolly" born in Chicago from "Adam Clayton" born in Dublin?
What are you talking about? false and racist in what? man up and clarify. I don't know what you said is true (I doubt it because you have been exposed by the other poster in this thread that you have no idea what you talked about). And I don't care because I was not even talking about their official reason to it. I made my point from the prospective of a foreigner there. Once again, do you want to go to apply for a local ID when the people who works there can't even pronounce your name? Yes or no? What's your point? Truong is already spelled in English, not in any Vietnamese phonics system. What difference does it make? My father was given this name even since he arrived here. We have been using this name ever since. Why do we have to change it?
I just wanted to follow up on this since I missed it earlier. Pinyin is a system for rendering Chinese (specifically Mandarin) phonetics into the Roman alphabet. So as far as Pinyin is concerned it is the same alphabet as English. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinyin
It uses most of the same symbols but the sounds are totally different. Also V is sometimes a vowel in pinyin. So no, I am correct again! I WIN THE INTERNETS!
Umm, I said what is your alternative to the term american. Obviously the word american has problems to distinguish the group he intended to talk about.
Pal, there is no letter 'V' in pinyin. On a more serious note, if your name is as simple and elegant as wnes, there is no need to change names!
I don't want to be rude, but I think you are deeply biased. Let's put it that way. Why do you think Asian should change to English names for documentation purpose. It's one thing to propose that Asian American should have one name for all documents and another that Asian American should keep English name only for documentation. Do you see you are a step beyond than the original proposal? Beside bias, I can't explain why you take that extra step.
