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Q: What is the strangest English personal name you found used by a local Chinese?
At our ENglish clube we have over 600 members and every now and then, I meet someone with bizarre names. The two that tie for first place i my book was a girl named "Meat" and another who named herself "Cry", I did not ask why.
My favorite was a big fat guy who named himself "Hunk". That and I've met several people who use numbers for names. Six, Seven, and Eleven are popular, no idea why. Not a mainlander, but there is a famous HK director named Oxide Pang. I guess he likes rust. Also seen a couple kids named 'Dinosaur' or 'Dino', and a rich snobby kid named 'Cook'.
Where do these names come from? I met this arrogant British teacher who would intentionally give kids these messed up names because he thought it was funny. I'm sure that's where some of the names come from is guys like that. Last time I saw him he was trying to name a kid "Dart".
Library
Come
Tree
Tomato
Pooky
Justin Beiber and Michael Jackson - in the same class
WC
Just had a student named Wall-e, spelled with the hyphen and everything.
Frederick the Great. and a few other titles. One girl said her name was "Betty" and "Bill".
I asked why. She told me she was a girl but as strong as an Ox. Come to think of it, "BB" would be okay. for a girl.
When I get a new staff with some ridiculous English name, I ask them to change it (and will provide suggestions).
I know it's because the Chinese aren't comfortable with meaningless names; Bobby, Michelle, and Michael are all suitable and perfectly normal names, however, they are meaningless so the Chinese always pick a name of something they can look up in the dictionary.
when i first came to china, i got to name an entire kindergarten class. i chose names from the Simpsons... there was everyone... bart, lisa, homer, apu, bumble bee man, kent brockman, barney, mr. smithers, mr. burns... now, i feel bad for it and hope they have changed their names since...
mArtiAn:
I had a similar experience actually, about 12 years ago in Yangshuo, I was asked to name the whole lot so I had them file past and I just handed out name tags: Batman, Superman, King Kong, God, Spiderman.........
I know many that can be called Asshole. Does this count?
A Meten student named "Shower"... I know how to say this in chinese So for a chinese name this would be very strange if there's any relation to that
Royce. I had never heard of that name before, especially for a really polite, handsome, well-educated Chinese guy.
I once had a student who named herself Monkey. Every time I called her by that name I got stressed. Her name was actually Monkey in Chinese. I had to give her a name that sounded almost similar but not offensive...What! I don't like stress.
While Echo isn't the strangest name, it is probably the most amusing. It takes a lot of willpower when calling attendance to not as, "Is there an Echo in here?" Best was when there were two Echoes in a class.
I have had students with all kinds of strange names. Echo, tree, and apple have been common names for girls...
Apple and Orange are par for the course in China. A scruffy-looking girl called Clean. A boy who wasn't allowed to pick Osama Bin Laden or Jesus, so settled for the name God. He was actually pretty cool - more Chinese should buck the norm, even if it means having a bunch of Hitlers and Stalins in class!
A girl named 'Sorrow'.
A girl named 'Moses'.
A boy named ' Will U Am' with space in between !
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