What's in a name?

September 24, 2012

Over the past few days I’ve been doing classroom observation at Disney English centers.  I can’t describe to you how truly adorable these little kids are and how excited I am to work with them! 

Now my understanding is that it’s typical for Chinese students (everywhere, not just at DE) to choose an English name to go by in the classroom.  Many keep these names when they get older and study abroad or if they go into a business where they interact with a lot of English speakers.  Often they just go by the pinyin form of their Chinese name (Weiran, Cheng Cheng, etc.)  And sometimes they choose a name because it is either close to the sound of their Chinese name or has a similar meaning.  Unfortunately, there seems to also be a lot of choosing names that are old fashioned or that aren’t really names at all.

During my observations and from looking at the names written on the work displayed around the center, I noticed about 65% of the students have typical English names like Jason and Abigail, but the others…well…here are some samples:

M= Male, F=Female

Clement (M)

Fergus (M)

Estelle (Seriously, this is a name chosen for a 5 year old)

Vivian (Along with Kitty and Candy this is one of the most popular names for girls!)

Rain (M)

Snake (M)

Lightning  (M)

Sky (M)

Cherry (F-I’m told fruits are popular)

Brown (M)

Encore (F)

Scottypippin (mushed together to make a first name)

Apple (F)

Dragon (M)

Lovely (F)

Go-go (F)

Cinderella (F)

Winnie (M, I’m pretty sure it’s after Winnie the Pooh)

Lemon (F))

I was telling these names to some of my friends that have taught English in China before and they contributed other names :

Eleven

Hello Beef

Smile

Green

Boot

Kinky

Handsome

Dollar

And my favorite name ever:

iphone4