What’s in a Name?

“Why don’t you give your hero a real Vietnamese name?”  That was the comment made by some guy who read my blog for DVAN—Diasporic Vietnamese Arts Network.  I’m a featured blogger there.  If you haven’t visited the site, you should.  In the lingo of the youth culture:  it’s the bomb.

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The blog announced my intention to write the first Vietnamese American Detective Novel with a Vietnamese American Detective written by a Vietnamese American.  It was one part reaching out to my community and the other part shameless PR.

I know what this guy meant by “real Vietnamese name.”  The guy wanted me to give the character, Robert, a traditional name:  Viet or Khai or Long.  He was a little coy; he didn’t come out and say it.  It took a whole bunch of comments exchanged before he finally blurted it out.  And I was there the entire time, yanking his chain:  I wanted him to say what he wanted…because I knew that would make him think about what he meant by REAL and AUTHENTIC and TRADITIONAL  and stuff like that.

This is probably the most exchanges I’ve ever had with anyone in the comments section.  But it was worth it:  my final comment kinda set him off.  I wrote:  Okay, how about a REAL traditional Vietnamese name.  How about KEVIN?

For those of you who don’t know, Kevin is pretty much the most common name given to Vietnamese kids nowadays.  It supplants David, Justin AND Lucas—all runner-ups.  And it’s probably more common than Viet or Khai or Long, which are names that are common mostly among recent immigrants.

Of course, Kevin didn’t start out being Vietnamese.  But like 24 Karat Gold Rolex Watches and Toyota Camry’s, that name became kind-of-a-thing for my people.  Kevin, it’s a real Irish-y Irish name—the kind of name that proud-Irish-people-who-are-really-proud-to-be-Irish give their kids.  How do I know this?  I had a roommate in grad school named Kevin Patrick Cooney:  he was a child of the late seventies when everybody, not just black folk, was reclaiming their Kunta Kinte real-name.

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I can totally sympathize with this guy who called me out on my “Robert.”  Growing up, I had many an opportunity to change my name.  When I became a naturalized citizen of the United States—that was the easiest moment to take the leap.  Why?  Because you got a new piece of paper, telling you exactly who you are and you did NOT need to pay for fees or fill out additional forms.  My parents went around and asked all of us if we wanted to change our names.  My eldest brother seized the opportunity and went all-in, redubbing himself George Stanford Ho.   We all understood.  His Vietnam name was DUNG.  That literally means shit in this country.  And he got a lot of shit for his name.  Yeah, he got into his fair share of scraps.

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Even though I was sympathetic, it did not surprise me that later on he would get a nose job.  This happened in college.  For a month, during winter break, he walked around the house with a bandage and made-pretend that it came from a accident that occurred during a ski trip.  (Yes, he also joined a fraternity and was into all sorts of polo and lacoste and argyle socks.  And don’t even get me started on the day he came home pretending he was an English gentleman with a fake British accent).

I think he hired a butcher because the nose job got botched; the silicone ran; he kept on trying to fix his nose, pushing it back into shape.  My brother became the unofficial Michael Jackson of the family.

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I’m not trying to cap on George—well maybe I am just a bit—but, to me, he was a warning signal about what happens when you trade in your Kunta Kinte name for a brand, spanking new whitey name.  And this is a long way of saying that I’m happy I never felt the inclination to change my name, that I never felt uncomfortable with my name—Khanh Ho.

I also recognize that he changed his name because he was the eldest and was used to being wealthy and rich and top-of-the-food-chain.  Coming to the United States at the height of your teenage years and suddenly losing it all must have been a kick to the nut sac every day.   Me:  I was the youngest of eight kids.  I didn’t ever think about a lost homeland because I was barely conscious when we landed in the United States.  Whenever grown-ups talked about the lost glories of Vietnam, I literally thought they were making stuff up.  I never had to suffer in the way my brother did—looking backward, feeling intense waves of inadequacy.

 

Still, for a long time I was quite judgmental about names.  I hated it when people said “I’m going to give my kid an American name.”  Why?  because that suggested that Vietnamese people weren’t really Americans.  This cut to the quick. It showed a fundamental misunderstanding of the way citizenship worked in a pluralistic society where Joshuas and Geoffreys and Obamas were part of the grain.  It showed me that you had internalized the message of America:  you don’t belong; no, you’ll never belong; go back to where you belong.

At one point, I thought that, were I to reproduce, I would choose names for my offspring that were not conventional–not names at all:  River or Trout or Rainbow.  I didn’t think that this was, in its own way, a kind of whitey thing to do:  a whitey-hippie thing to do.

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6 thoughts on “What’s in a Name?

  1. Khanh – You bring up such an important topic. Names can have a very important significance and readers care about them. As you’ve found, they can take names very, very seriously. I think you also touch on what a name says about a person and that can be really significant too. Definitely ‘food for thought,’ for which thanks.

    • Thank you, Margot. Your comments are always so thoughtful. Naming has always been one of the difficult things for me…whether that be titles for things or monikers for characters. So, I’ve had the best luck with starting with a name and then letting a few friends brainstorm the real names when I’m deeper into whatever I’m writing. It’s really fun, actually: a great drinking game that is a bit more polished and elegant than quarters or beer pong…

  2. I didn’t know all of that about you Khanh, even though we were classmates all through elementary school. I though that Lucy was your only sibling. When my brother (who was found abandoned on the doorsteps of a South Korean orphanage, without any identification or anything) arrived to join our family, my parents named him “David” after one of my mom’s old friends… He once referred to himself as “Korish,” a Korean-Jew…

    • Probably the most notable thing about me growing up was when the teacher asked how many kids were in my family. That day, I was the stand-out. Only one other kid came close–Eric Kageyama, 6 kids. Ha! I had him beat and he knew it!

      I have two Korean friends who, later in life, took up their original names–inserting them as middle names or even appending them as surnames. I guess names are important…

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