It's been a while since I started living in the US as an immigrant - more than a decade now. May be a short time for many people, but to me personally about half of my life. For past a-bit-more-than-a-decade time frame, I never considered having an English (or more of an Americanized) name.
My name has always been a difficult thing to me and people around me - easy to some people but difficult to say or understand to the majority.
Some places an accent in my name - even though there shouldn't be any, some, especially Germans or of different language area do not even know how to read it.
What really ticks me off is when I'm ordering for take-outs from the restaurant - to make it easy, I give name "Jay" then 9 out of 10 times whoever on the phone writes it down as "Jake." Maybe my pronunciation was horrible? I thought Jay was quite English anyways... Whatever, so be it.
Jake is the name I then chose, at least on WWW world. Had a journey of about three months last year, trying to get a name - I wanted something very unusual and unique yet still English. But when people started writing down "Jay" as "Jake," I thought Jake may be an easier name to say, understand and write down.
Not much thought afterwards, but my English name will be Jake from now and on, and probably a name I will use for ever, whether I like it or not, following the flow. And honestly, I think it's a good fit for me, whatever the meaning of it is (except it seems that my mom doesn't really like it for whatever reason).
My name has always been a difficult thing to me and people around me - easy to some people but difficult to say or understand to the majority.
Some places an accent in my name - even though there shouldn't be any, some, especially Germans or of different language area do not even know how to read it.
What really ticks me off is when I'm ordering for take-outs from the restaurant - to make it easy, I give name "Jay" then 9 out of 10 times whoever on the phone writes it down as "Jake." Maybe my pronunciation was horrible? I thought Jay was quite English anyways... Whatever, so be it.
Jake is the name I then chose, at least on WWW world. Had a journey of about three months last year, trying to get a name - I wanted something very unusual and unique yet still English. But when people started writing down "Jay" as "Jake," I thought Jake may be an easier name to say, understand and write down.
Not much thought afterwards, but my English name will be Jake from now and on, and probably a name I will use for ever, whether I like it or not, following the flow. And honestly, I think it's a good fit for me, whatever the meaning of it is (except it seems that my mom doesn't really like it for whatever reason).
2 comments:
I had an English name when I was young...maybe 8 or 9. It was Rachel. Still, some friends call me Ray or chell, but after graduating high school, I let people call me 'HYONI'. Anyway, I'm still confusing about English name. Rachel, or HYONI, whatever... I didn't make a choice! :)
I didn't make the choice yet either... but it's just sometimes people have trouble saying my name. I thought I am now immune to it, but realized that it is still annoying as much as it was 10 years ago, especially when people put accent on my name....
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