DCentric

Maybe I should drop the Sean and go with my given Shahrooz

thanks for your post.  i am an immigrant woman who has experienced much grief over my  first and family names.  like many in my generation, i was named after jesus’ mom, mary. my first name is maria xxxx but nearly all bureaucracies enter my first name as maria and my middle name as xxxx. when enrolling in graduate school, the registrar told me that i *had to accept* this parsing out of my name, as the name field in their database could only accommodate 13 characters.  this means that my name in the registrar’s database does not match that on my passport or marriage certificate. who knows what problems may arise in the future.

when i got married, i changed my name to my husband’s more “american” family name — a choice that i still struggle with. at the time, i was tired of people mangling my last name and making assumptions based on it. yet now that my parents are gone, i sometimes wish that i had retained my father’s name, or at the very least, come up with some sort of compound-name compromise.  however, compound family names — especially those in the spanish tradition of “de aaaa bbbb” or “aaaa y bbbb” — also cause headaches on form and with bureaucracies.

what irritates most is being told that, “that’s not how ‘we’ do things”. obviously, i’m not part of “we”.

Shahrooz is so much more awesome than Sean.

Elahe, my dad had the same issue and changed his name from Adnan (pretty common Arabic name) to Anthony, he even changed his middle name last year after all these years (for some strange reason I still don’t understand).  

I had a similar issue as island girl describes in the comments: My dad immigrated and they mistakenly made his surname his grandfather’s name instead of his actual family name.  When I was born, I was given that same incorrect last name, and only until 1994 did we finally change our names to the actual family names from back home.  This was all due to people not understanding the structure of other cultures’ naming systems (in this case: given name – father’s name – grandfather’s name – family name).

I find it interesting that people have trouble pronouncing names, but I think there are some ignorant people out there that purposely mispronounce names to make some kind of misguided point about this being “America.”  So, with that in mind, I understand peoples’ need to fit in and be accepted.  It just really sucks that they feel they have to trade in their history/culture to get that.

I once worked at a company owned by Iranian immigrants. It was interesting the lengths the owner would go to “american-ize” his name.  It went so far that he actually had email addresses and voicemail boxes for the multiple pseudonyms.  He always thought the best sales people had the most american sounding names, and would either choose employees with this characteristic, or ask them to pick a nickname so they will appear more american.  (This happened for employees of all descents.)  

I remember at one point a his family friend joined the company with a very Persian name. He created a name that was completely silly, it sounded like a comic book character.  It caused immense laughter in the office when ever he used it during business meeting.  Frankly, we preferred learning to pronounce people’s real names. I always wonder how hard it was for him when he first came to the US after the Iranian Revolution, and how it became so important to have an “american name”

I think you should!  IT will encourage discussion about your heritage (if you are OK with that).

Agreed!

Do it! I have an acquaintance (not American, but Canadian) who is of Indian descent, and he refuses to go with his given name because he said he hates it because it sounds “too Indian”. It makes me sad. Sure, he may identify as Canadian, but who says his name is any less Canadian than any other?

My son has a classmate with the unfortunate name of “Osama.” But he took care of that long ago and goes by “Sam.”

Shahrooz – awesome!
Sean – good but  meh beside Shahrooz!

That’s just the thing though. Sometimes you don’t want to talk about it because all they know is something from Million Dollar Baby, Blood Diamond or The Last King of Scotland and they’re just being polite for a short period of time and don’t want to be educated on some of the finer details.

Qalil.com

It wouldn’t be a problem if people didn’t butcher my name so much! And I tried making it easier by spelling it with English Characters too! Imagine if I used hieroglyphics or Amharic?

I completely agree about using our names just the way they are. We’ve learned to say Nowitzky and Beauchamp. They can learn to say Amunugama Rajapakse Rajakaruna.Qalil.com

Thanks everyone for your comments and for sharing your stories. Keep your eyes peeled for a follow-up on this.

Thanks for the article! As a Japanese descent born in Brazil, it was tough knowing that I had to change my name as a kid when I moved here. From Estevão (“Steven” in Portuguese) to Steven.

Similar to the italians, jews, germans, czechs and russians who entered the US  in the late 19th/early 20th C.  My family name was changed, and my friends entire family (3 brothers  – who all came in to gether) and all 3 of them have different last names.  Ahh america.

facebook doesnot accept my amahric name why?