It can’t be considered as a substitute unless your name is unpronouncable, like the one of the server administrator we worked with. He introduced himself as Denis Dai, and while signing on documents, he put his original (chinese)name, which was very difficult to read and pronounce- he is one of those people who had a legitimate reason.
Now consider most of the sikhs living in Vancouver like the harpinders or jatinders, pritpals, who have become harrys or jays or pauls, and almost all the persians, like a real estate agent i know who call himself kevin, while his original name is kamal..go figure. Even this morning, I was inquiring about some stuff over the phone, and the guy i was talking to introduced himself as jarrold, even though he could barely speak any english with a heavy persian accent, and when he asked me my name, i flatly went, ‘..Abdullah..’ and he said..‘oh aslam alaikum..brother’, my name is actually Jawad....i really don’t think jawad is any harder to pronounce than jarrold; just a different name. I have noticed that the hindus usually stick to their original names no matter how difficult it is. My perception is that it only tends to be the sikhs or muslims who have this problem of changing their names after moving to the West, and not to mention the chinese.
anyway, are there any guppies who go by any pseudo factitious name..come out of the closet you impostors you..
Yea the asians over here in Vancouver are messed up. I don't know how they get goray names from all those long chinese or indian names that sound nothing like the goray name at all.
Maybe they get sick of everyone mangling their names and just give themselves simpler sounding names. On one hand, i think its akin to losing a part of ur culture, urself, when u change your name and some might think ur not proud of it. On the other hand, I understand why they would chang ehtier name becoz I would get pretty sick of people mis-pronouncing it all the damn time. Hell, I get it right nwo all the time and my name isnt that hard to pronounce (supposedly )
I think a continuation of this discussion is whether and how frequently will you want to correct the pronunciation of your name, if ppl keep butchering it?
For example, "Faisal" is not a difficult name to pronounce, in my opinion, but many goras insists on replacing 's' with 'z' and pronounce it with all separate syllables, like Faa-ee-zaal. Sometimes I let it go, but if I figure I'd be dealing with the person for a period of time, I do correct them, and they invariably appreciate the correct pronounciation.
^ I had to write a story for my class a few months ago, and one of the characters name was Faisal. Professor was pronouncing it Fai (rhyme with tie) -zaal and i was like ..uhh...Somehow nondesis sound weird saying these names. But also, she's married to a desi guy r has a bunch of desi friends I dunno....Then I heard some arab girls pronouncing it the same way... I never knew it cud be pronounced like that..
I have 3 Chinese friends…who immigrated to USA…4/5 years back…One has named his son Mark…others have named their daughters Emily & Catherine…themselves they can hardly speak a word in intelligible English
^ Rainbow Susan, that's an immature judgement from u, ever heard of something called T Y P O, oh well, not everyone is a keyboard perfect freak like you
I tell ya, it's a nuisance though. My name gets butchered a alot but good thing is that in sounds cute spoken by women so I don't mind much :D
There are couple of people who just kill it which really pisses me off. I've corrected them couple of times, and they have heard other people calling my name so they 'know' what the correct pronounciation but somehow they are not able to.