My name is my home
This writer gives his reasons for choosing his Vietnamese name over his American one.
Home
 It happened every September, as surely as the swallows return to San Juan Capistrano off the California coast. On the first day of school, the teacher would butcher the pronunciation of my name: K?-Phong. My soft, elegant Vietnamese name (which means “strange wind”) would end up sounding like the clanging of pots and pans. My mom anticipated this and the subsequent teasing that accompanied it so she decided that I would go by Paul instead. Paul was my baptismal name, the Saint who was supposed to look after me. For the 22 years that I went by Paul, it served me well, though there was another Paul Tr?n in my high school and it was not very fun sharing a name. Why K?-Phong? In the last week alone, I have had two grocery clerks mutilate my name, play Guess the Breed of Asian I Am, and even offer a “konichiwa” after I told them I was Vietnamese. At first thought, it might seem easier to just go by Paul, right? Why did I give up a good Western name, one that belonged to a disciple of Jesus at that? I can and probably will write a novel about it, but I will keep to my short list here. Rebellion: When I decided to become a writer, to live partly in the public eye, I knew that my name was my career and I had to choose it carefully. I wanted to take all the shame I had around my Vietnamese name and rebel against it. What was my kryptonite growing up would become my yellow sun, and it would empower me to write fearlessly. Empowerment: Brazilian author and educator Paulo Freire writes that “to name the world is to change it.” I wanted to declare my identity, to change myself, to make sure that everyone knew I was a Vietnamese writer living in America, not assimilated, not a parrot. I want them to be uncomfortable with the pronunciation, to struggle with their speech, to feel the displacement I feel as a spore of the Vietnamese Diaspora. Role modeling: More than 10 years ago, I won an essay-contest writing about the lack of Vietnamese role models. I also have spent most of my life as a youth educator. How could I help build a proud, sustaining Vietnamese American community when I was hiding my identity, ashamed of my birth name? For a while, my renaming and its effects was just a guess. But then, it started. Small. And not with a young person, but an elder. I had just been published in Laney College’s literary journal. A Vietnamese man in his 50s, (whose photography was in the issue) walked up to me and told me he saw my name, my Vietnamese name, and that he was so proud that I could write well enough to be included. After literary readings in the Bay Area, people would approach me and thank me for writing with honesty and compassion. For me, the honesty and compassion starts with my name. My idea was blooming and there was no going back. My name was my home. Why change? Like Vietnamese history, the answer is complicated. I am by no means judging those who have changed their names or name their kids Tyler and Buffy. That would be reactionary, or on the streets it is called “hating,” and I am more about alternative ideas. Adaptation is part of our culture, geographically and historically. As the land between India and China, ideas, foods, religions, came to us through travelers and merchants. Between being colonized by China and France, and the thing we had with the U.S., we were forced to adapt to survive. But there is one more thing. What author Quang X. Ph?m calls the “refugee complex.” The way we came to this country, as allies in a lost war, has something to do with it. For some, changing their name was about fitting in as quickly as possible, finding a new home, saying thank you for the shelter. Or it could just be about avoiding the ignorant grocery clerks and first-day-of-school ridicule for their children. What’s lost? If by choosing a Western name we gain acceptance, what do we lose? Everything has its price in America, right? Are we losing our culture? And what culture would that be? Are we selling out? Buying in? After all, Shakespeare writes, “What’s in a name? That which we call a rose/By any other word would smell as sweet.” And yet, I feel like this forced migration of mine has already robbed me of so much. I have yearned for Vi?t Nam since I was a child. After I visited in 2002, it got even worse. I feel like I have lost a limb. I met the cousins I was supposed to play with, my cô’s (my aunts) who were supposed to spoil me, and my chú’s (my uncles) who were supposed to tease me. Most memorably, I swung alone in my Ông N?i’s (my paternal grandfather’s) hammock, the one I was supposed to be held in. I miss the morning horns of the cyclos waking me, the kids that speak perfect Vietnamese, and the ridiculously good street vendors’ delights. With all that gone, how could I sacrifice my name too? So I disagree with Shakespeare. A rose would still smell sweet, but to call it a hoa h?ng, a Vietnamese rose, would be even sweeter. What’s next? My model for names is the South Asian community. The Indian and Pakistani people I know have kept their traditional names and not chosen Western names. I asked an Indian friend why he kept his name and he said there was a sense of pride in keeping his name, although he, too, faced awkward situations growing up. He also mentioned that there was a negative stereotype in his community to changing names; it was seen as too “slickster,” which I loved for both its image and communal cultural preservation. Some people see the United States as a melting pot, where everyone is blended into one culture. Critics say that the melting pot erases the identity of immigrants and that we should be a salad bowl where all ingredients, all cultures keep their identity and contribute to the meal. I like that idea better. So my hope is this: Instead of changing names, we change the culture instead. A daunting task indeed, but the steps are small and simple. We keep our Vietnamese names. Or go back to them. And if someone cannot pronounce it, well, that is their problem. This culture can change, it just does not like to. It will be slow, like a glacier moving, but it will happen. If it can say last names like Baryshnikov, Krzyzewski, or Dostoyevsky, it surely can learn to say gorgeous first names like Ly Huong, Y?n Linh and K?-Phong, too. K?-Phong Tr?n is a founding member of the Vietnamese Artists Collective and a graduate fellow in UC Riverside’s MFA program in creative writing. He is the recipient of a 2005 New America Media award for English-language commentary.
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