The problem with my many names
A piece written and narrated by H. Long Nguyen Tran.
I don’t go to the post office here often. There are two reasons for that: I hardly get physical mail or order stuff online, and I don’t like having to mispronounce my own name. But I was there last week to pick up a package. I couldn’t remember the last time I was there, and why I don’t like being there.
“Can you tell me your name?”, said the postal worker at the front desk.
It’s all instincts now. I always give out my first name when someone asks me that. “Long”, not the most unusual name for a Vietnamese boy. Unusual here, maybe, but not where I’m from. And I like that name, like it enough to keep it when I came here. It’s already a common word in English, so it saves me the trouble of spelling it out every time I say it, and it sounds close enough to what it’s supposed to sound like.
“Right, and your last name?”
When I think about it, even referring to them as “first name” and “last name” is wrong. “Nguyễn Trần Hoàng Long” is my full name, “Nguyễn” is my “họ”, my “root” name, “Trần” and “Hoàng” are my “đệm”, “added” names, and “Long” is my “tên”, which translates simply to “name”.
Looking at that, you can sort of see how Vietnamese names can be adapted into English. The root name becomes the last name, or family name; added names can be middle names, and, naturally, your first name is your “tên”. But I can tell you it’s not always that simple. Immigration services here took my name as it appeared on my Vietnamese passport, which simply denotes “Family Name: Nguyễn” and “Given Name: Trần Hoàng Long”, and officially made “Tran” my first name, “Hoang Long” my middle name, and “Nguyen” my last name.
I know for a fact I am not the only person who has had this happen to them. Late August this year, ABC News put out an article detailing this exact phenomenon in Australia, and the trouble one has to go through to have it corrected. I have accepted that “Tran Nguyen” is my “government” name, which freed me up to have another version of my name to use professionally and socially.
I have never been able to give myself an Anglicised name. I tried to, because I know it can give me more opportunities. I see other Vietnamese and East Asian people do it all the time, but I’m just never comfortable with doing it myself. Part of me feels like I’m suppressing my heritage and my identity.
My name is one of the things that make me unique, especially in a multicultural environment.
I think everyone would have a better chance of remembering a “Long” than a “John” or “Jason”. But if I’m being honest, the bigger reason is that I just can’t stand not being called “Long”. I tried “Lawrence” for a bit, at the suggestion of a well-meaning friend, and it was painful. For a week, I was waking up to look at “Lawrence” in the mirror and never finding him looking back at me.
“Long Tran Hoang Nguyen” is the one I put on my resume; my “government name” is still in there, so it’s a good compromise, and it can be shortened to “Long Nguyen”, which is the name I use most for general purposes. But sometimes I would use “Long Tran”, because I would get self-conscious about how common “Nguyen” is as a surname for Vietnamese people, and “Trần” is my mother’s root name, so I’m comfortable with using it as a last name.
Nguyen, I said to the postal worker. It sounded like “Wu-in”. I said, thinking about how I should’ve used “Tran” instead. That one is so much easier for me to say without the accents, and so much easier for English-only speakers to grasp, despite not being as widespread as “Nguyen”. I don’t know why he even bothered asking; he asked for my ID anyway, which then created another layer of confusion, as I am “Tran Hoang Long Nguyen” on my Learner’s Permit.
I’m trying a new format for my name now. In a few places, I’ve decided to put in “H. Long Nguyen Tran” as my name. I have to admit, somewhat embarrassingly, that I was inspired by American filmmaker M. Night Shyamalan to do so. Nevertheless, I think this one addresses most of my qualms with having a non-Western name here. “H. Long” combines my added name and my given name into a first name, and “Nguyen Tran” keeps both my official last name and my preferred last name. “Preferred” might be the wrong word; I’d like to use “acceptable” in its place, but that would imply something too harsh. I don’t know, this name won’t solve all of my problems, I’m just hoping it will make it easier to pick up the mail next time.