Do you use another name when introducing yourself to people outside your country?

[Cosmic Janitor]

Nah, I might give the language's equivalent as an option if someone has issues saying the proper version (or if they change the pronounciation anyway), but I don't make up some fake name. I'm still kinda baffled how our chinese subsidiary does that when most of their names aren't that hard to pronounce. Most just fail at the first try because they see their names written first and the romanization of chinese letters follows a completely different rule set from any roman/indo-german rules (for some characters) people are used to. Calling yourself John Smith when your name is Zhang Wei or Jane Smith instead of Wang Xiu Ying , might be culturally equivalent, but it's also obviously not your name mate.

[Freighter]

I wasn't complaining about how it's pronounced or written in its native language. I was merely pointing out that it's irrational to include unused characters when converting it to English. How absurd some of the English spellings for things can be is not relevant.

You don't convert any names when spelling names in English that are part of the same alphabet. They are already typed out in the roman alphabet. Unlike mine. Nguyen remains Nguyen in Vietnamese and English. My family name? It's but it's typed as Lee when romanized. No such thing exists for Vietnamese names, because they are already in your alphabet.

[Amerissis]

No, my name is very simple and sounds English, so everyone can pronounce it.

[shadowmouse]

@Mistame @ Katie N @Cinnamilk @Freighter

Oops! That didn't go in any direction I expected. Apologies!

At least with Chinese there is the problem of different systems of Romanization over the years, compounded by language shifts over time (and to some degree by region). You'll notice I fudged and just said "Chinese" in part to account for some of the variation. If I recall, the shifts over time are part of how we got Peking and then Beijing, leaving one to wonder how "K" and "J" could be confused for each other. Kweichow to Guizhou is a bit less brain melting but still makes me take a second to switch gears.

[Freighter]

@Mistame @ Katie N @Cinnamilk @Freighter

Oops! That didn't go in any direction I expected. Apologies!

At least with Chinese there is the problem of different systems of Romanization over the years, compounded by language shifts over time (and to some degree by region). You'll notice I fudged and just said "Chinese" in part to account for some of the variation. If I recall, the shifts over time are part of how we got Peking and then Beijing, leaving one to wonder how "K" and "J" could be confused for each other. Kweichow to Guizhou is a bit less brain melting but still makes me take a second to switch gears.

Yeah, we have that here as well. My city as an example, Taegu and Daegu. Pusan and Busan.

[KOUNTERPARTS]

No, but when I learn to pronounce this name I will be introducing myself as this exclusively:

[LilSaihah]

My name is Chinese and English so I don't think I'd ever need to.

[Sulli Su]

No, I also don't seek friendships with people who don't speak English or aren't from English speaking countries in general.

Why would you not?

[Doctor Amadeus]

Why would you not?

Because I don’t like to impose on people in that way. I feel it’s rude if people don’t obligate themselves to at least speak the language of those they visit. Even more so I don’t feel like a good host by the same measure.

I’m very serious and sincere in my efforts to associate or make friends with others. Not speaking the same language goes against that because of the reasons I explained.

If the time comes I learn Chinese or say German. Then once I’ve learned the language all I can and get the thumbs up from where I learn it. Then I’d feel differently.

[Lochton]

Is this something you do?

My name is a development of Martin, so I use my own but nod kindly if they make small mistakes or just end up calling me Martin.

[Jotaux]

I do use a mispronunciation of my name, its just easier for them and I don't have to spend forever going over it.

[ghotihook]

@Katie N Thanks. Yes, I would have mispronounced it, even among Vietnamese in the US I'm used to hearing the old war era NOO-yen. I looked it up and find:

https://inogolo.com/pronunciation/Nguyen

I'd probably still mangle it a bit, but could probably manage close to that.

That was my best friend's last name. We just said "win". But yea, we heard all kinds of weird pronunciations.

[omeomorfismo]

nah, my name is Emmànuele and for some reason all spanish speaker i meet cut it as manuél (even my peruvian relatives).
i dont give a fuck and continue to show up as Emmanuele anyway.

[Skorpionss]

Nope, my name is Morena at all times.

Nice to meet you Morena at all times, I'm Alex.

[conceptKitty]

Nice to meet you Morena at all times, I'm Alex.

Hi Alex!

[Shakadam]

No, my name's Robin, it's easy enough to understand in all languages. Most people have heard of Batman and Robin anyways

Can be a female name in some parts of the world I think (USA maybe?) but that doesn't change anything.

[Cinnamilk]

At least with Chinese there is the problem of different systems of Romanization over the years, compounded by language shifts over time (and to some degree by region). You'll notice I fudged and just said "Chinese" in part to account for some of the variation. If I recall, the shifts over time are part of how we got Peking and then Beijing, leaving one to wonder how "K" and "J" could be confused for each other. Kweichow to Guizhou is a bit less brain melting but still makes me take a second to switch gears.

Consonants are usually transcribed over in a way that makes sense in Japanese, minus some niche cases with づ and ぢ, the voiced versions of tsu and chi which sound like zu and ji in most dialects.

The bigger problem is vowels, since usually all the length information is lost in transcription. If I wanted to type Koji Kondo's name in kanji, I'd have to enter kondoukouji into the IME to get 近藤浩治. Tokyo is Toukyou, but Kyoto is Kyouto.

It doesn't really matter, but is a little annoying that both Hepburn and Nihon-shiki romanizations they opted to mark long vowels by diacritics which a) aren't used when entering the character via IME and b) get dropped in English anyways cause nobody can be arsed to type that out.

[shadowmouse]

cause nobody can be arsed to type that out.

<chortle> Just like Pinyin!

[Cinnamilk]

<chortle> Just like Pinyin!

To be fair, tone is mind blowing if you don't take a little time and train yourself for it. I'd think most English speakers would blow it off.

Before I decided (very recently) to go ahead and learn Mandarin, I remember asking the name of one of my favorite waiters at a hot pot place in my hometown that caters to the decently sized Chinese population that the University recruits. I think I had him repeat it a few times for me because I didn't want to mess up the tones.

I'm curious if Chinese students in English speaking environments get bothered enough about the tones/j,q,x,zh,ch,sh,r getting messed up enough to want to switch to English names, or if it's just sort of ingrained into their foreign language learning culture that it's "proper" to adopt a name native to the language. All of the people from China that I talked to regularly from undergrad just kept their usual names with order reversed to Given-Family, but I had a graduate TA I worked an intro lab with that went by Jack for whatever reason.

[shadowmouse]

I'm curious if Chinese students in English speaking environments get bothered enough about the tones/j,q,x,zh,ch,sh,r getting messed up enough to want to switch to English names, or if it's just sort of ingrained into their foreign language learning culture that it's "proper" to adopt a name native to the language. All of the people from China that I talked to regularly from undergrad just kept their usual names with order reversed to Given-Family, but I had a graduate TA I worked an intro lab with that went by Jack for whatever reason.

It may depend on which province they are from. Shanghai schools used to push "English names" and they're still common in Beijing. On the other hand, Cupcake is from Shandong, has very good English, and didn't have one. Part of the problem for foreign teachers in China is having such a limited number of common family names (there are in theory 100, but even some of those are much more common than others) leads to trying to sort out grades and attendance with three different students in the same period named Wang LiLi.

I think the Chinese are fairly used to mangled pronunciation. Although the percentage has risen, despite Putonghua being the official language, there are still a lot of Chinese who don't speak it or barely speak it and usually don't. Of those that do, there are regions where people have trouble with sounds, such as Jiangsu mixing up L and N or the Southern problem with SH that means they make 4 and 10 sound the same. That's part of why the Chinese drill tongue twisters: https://www.yellowbridge.com/chinese/twisters.php