Sheep, Fish, Demons, and Doorbells

Sometimes I don’t know whether to be impressed with, or to laugh at the Chinese students’ choices for English names. Part of me is ashamed at the fact that Westerners come to Asian countries, and because we can’t pronounce people’s real names, they have to assume an alternate identity for easy identification, which is a name they often literally pick out of a book. That being said, I personally know that it would be much harder for me to memorize 55 Chinese names, and most of the time I would probably botch the pronunciation anyway.  Plus, their choices for names are definitely a source of amusement.

Here are a few of my favourite English names:

L. Bee

Sheep

Dota (stands for Defence of the Ancients, for anyone who is not familiar with the international video game sensation that is World of Warcraft)

Waka

Rey

Tom and Jerry (only funny because they sit beside each other and are best friends)

Huskar

Coco

Fish

Beata

Voctor

RainMaple

and my personal favourite, Demon (naturally, he’s a troublemaker!)

There’s another funny story that I wanted to share. I gave my HR class a quiz about different departments and positions in the hotel. The question was, “Name 4 entry-level positions in a hotel.” Some of the students often get confused about the terms “doorman”, “bellman,” “bellboy,” etc. I’ve tried to explain that they all mean the same thing, but naturally this could be a bit confusing. Anyways, three of the students, after lots of crossing out and scribbling and trying to figure out the right answer, wrote “doorbell” as one of the answers. So today I had to give a quick little lesson about how doorbells do not work in hotels!