A Singaporean friend of mine said to me that I should write something about Asian, or rather Chinese, names. 

He noted that the Chinese put their surname, such as CHAN (usually written in capital letters), first, and then their Chinese given names come after.  It might be CHAN Tuck Wai.  So, he is Mr Chan, and you always call him Tuck Wai — not Wai or Tuck; you use both names.  In turn, Anglo-saxon names are very confusing for the Chinese. So I have been called Mr Desley (because custom is to write our first name first, not our surname).  The Chinese also use my middle name — so if you have a middle name or a given name you don’t like, too bad!!!  The world now knows all your names (given and surnames)!  I have now gotten into the habit of capitalizing my family name so they know which name to call me.

I am still unable to explain the Malay and Indian naming conventions, except I know the Malay names do not have a family link. Rather, they are the ‘son’ or ‘daughter’ of the father and his given name. 

Salutations are really common here as well — ‘What shall we call you?”.  I say “Desley”.  This increases confusion, as most Asians would not call a professor by her first name alone.  It has taken me some time to get people to call me Prof Desley.  If you are a married woman you are ‘madam’: Madam Desley. (Umm… has a connotation in Australia that my mother would not have liked — her daughter has become a madam!)

Some Chinese people take a ‘western name’. Many do when they become Christian, but others do it for ease of pronunciation for English speakers, and they put the western name first, like in the the Anglo naming convention. So then they become, for example, Robin CHAN Tuck Wai, but then he is not Mr Robin, he is still Mr Chan. However, there still seems to be other rules, for example, when the western name is at the end of the names — i.e. CHAN Tuck Wai Robin.  So many rules, and they wonder why we get confused!

My greatest nightmare was last year when I was asked to call out the names of our graduating students, as I still haven’t got my tongue around the correct pronunciations! I knew I would not get them right, and in Mandarin pronouncing the same word with a different tone can change the whole meaning of the word.  I grew up with people getting my name wrong and (and they did at my graduation), so I was very aware of trying to get everyone’s name correct. Added to that, if I pronounced them really incorrectly the students might not even have recognized their name — how embarrassing! Fortunately I was saved and did not have to do it.  The ceremony was lovely and it was wonderful to hear the names read out — Mandarin is very musical language.  I sat there trying to guess the pronunciation and mostly got it wrong. Now I just have to practice as much as I can with my students and (thank goodness!!) they seem to make great allowances and are very patient with me.

I am sure that there are many other stories from other nurses who have had similar experiences!