except for Indian Christians like Russell Peters, why do 99.9% (im sure there are those do change, but i've never met a single one) of Indian immigrants choose to keep their Indian names and choose Indian names for their children in the west? This is unlike east asian immigrants, who usually adopt a western first name. Is it because Indians are more conscious and proud of their culture?

Hehe come to think of it, I can think of quite a few East Asian last names but except for historical figures my mind turns up blank for East Asian first names. I notice a lot of the Arabs in Jacksonville have western names too.

Wow would you want to give your kids a western name in the first place? Especially if you are an immigrant, the Western Culture is far from your own. Perhaps they choose their own names because that is what their kids is? Why give them a name from a culture that you don't relate to?

Don't u think it is possible that a good number of east asian immigrants may be christians? I know that Indian Christians in general are not dropping their original name in favor of anglo names anymore.

I for one wouldn't change my name, although when ppl call me its' a little bit anglicized. But i will never changed my name. A good number of desi's anglicize their name but they don't change it officially. Also anglo names have no soul, atleast that's what i think, and if u even change your last name you completely lose your identity. Indian names have a meaning, a history, why would i want to drop that

For ex: My name Amar, means immortal! Why would I want to lose that

well...a lot of east asian atheist immigrants adopt western names. and also, what is a desi?

Desi is someone who is from homeland or motherland. That would be Indians, Pakistanis Afghans, Bangladeshis, Nepalis, Sri Lankan, Mauritians, Maldivians, and Bhutanese. Basically its everyone from Indian Subcontiinent. It could also extend to Tibetans.

Desi is an informal term used to refer to South Asians, used mostly by South Asians in North America. I haven't heard anyone here in the UK use it though (since Asian usually means the same thing here). "Desi" literally means "one from our country" in Hindi and Sanskrit.

I've always wondered why almost every Chinese person I know, and most Koreans, have a Western first name? Why wouldn't they want to keep their Chinese/Korean first names? On the other hand, the few Japanese people I know have kept their Japanese first names but the Japanese are ironically considered "Western" by many other Asians despite this.

Most South Asians and Middle Easterners usually keep their native names because they want to uphold their native culture and identity. This is especially true for most Muslims and Hindus, who want to uphold their religion. Most people who convert to Islam even change their Western names to Islamic Arabic names as a sign of their Muslim identity.

Same name as my bro
I agree with Jagger with the part about the Chinese and Japanese.

chinese people have no pride in their culture from what i see around me. They all change their names to western ones, many of them say they only speak english when i know they speak chinese with their parents and they try to become as 'western' as they possibly can.

maybe those chinese you speak have a massive inferiority complex. because for those who's never been to china and see only pictures (those stereotypes of chinese that predominate in america) of chinese peasants, china's poverty, sweatshop labor, migrant workers, pollution, etc and compare those images to the america...well, you get a sense of which culture is superior.


a lot of indians i know, and even indian born chinese are well educated and versed in indian culture so they are more immune to making unfair stereotypical cultural comparisons.

I thought you were a girl Karma. Amar is a guy's name not a girls name!

EDIT: Is your brother's name Amar?

One of my friends, who is Chinese(I think) told me that he hates all "asians" and thinks that they are all "ugly" and none of them even look decent . To me that was very weird cuz, he was one of them. He told me that he would only marry or have a gf who is atleast half white.

I told him, there was this asian girl who was like super hot in my class, and he was like " that girl must be like 1 in a million cuz all asians are ugly" or is mixed with white.

Talk abt issues man!

lmao your such a retard...stop with these threads already. you are such an IDIOT.

we choose english names because we know other peopel cant pronounce the chinese one properly anyway. even so, we still have a chinese name. yes...we have two names.

leave it to a retard to think just because we are smart enough to think of all the trouble that a traditional name would cause and get a western name, as a sign of losing culture.

^how is that smarter? besides, have you ever seen an indian name or hear westerners pronounce indian names? they butcher the pronouncation far more often than they do with the single syllabled chinese names. if you don't have anything useful to contribute, please don't contribute at all. i don't need another insecure chinaman giving china and chinese people a bad image. with my other threads, you're confusing me with someone else.

How would a non-Western name cause trouble? Indians in the US are still succesful even though they have non-Western first names. IMO you get more respect for affirming your identity rather than whitewashing it.

Yes my brother's name is Amar.

I dont see why people link english names with no pride in their own culture.
The Chinese here in Holland are very proud of their roots and culture.

I agree. I personally love my name that represents my Hawaiian culture, and I aint never changing it. I don't understand why most converts to Islam change their names

lmao..dumbasses...maybe you missed the part where i said we have TWO NAMES!!! how is it whitewashing when we still have the other name.

and since when does a name determine whether you retain your culture or not, been to CHINATOWN buddy? nobody keeps their culture like chinese do.

even in something as white as hollywood, chinese themed movies and shyt still get made because of the chinese actors.

or something as black as hiphop, jin never lets people forget hes chinese.

no matter what we do or where we go we keep our culture...stupid discussion. you guys are confusing white-washing with respecting white culture. i was born here, its simply common sense to have a western name too. if you dont think so, then fine....but this is an EXTREMELY tiny issue that nobody cares about, and you guys are making a mountain out of an ant hill.

People say that my last name is "Westernized," and ask if my dad is a white-American. Even some Indians are suprised.

But, a lot of Hindus and even Sikhs have my last name. As a matter of fact, an Indian celebrity has my last name! (Gulshan..... )

i'd say a good 50% of the south asians (mostly indians, pakistanis, and tamils) i know have westernnames...

then again, a lot of them have christian last namestoo, like fernandes, d'souza, d'cruz, etc.


i guess that's because you can't forget he's chinese. :P j/k

50% of south asians have western names? Thats BS.

a lot of the time, indians with western names are christian...and ppl with the names fernandes, d'souza, d'cruz are usually from goa, and have portuguese blood in them.

Is it a tradition for the Chinese to keep 2 names? Or is it a more recent trend?

I also have 2 names but thats because its a Bangladeshi tradition to have 2 names, where one name is an official name and the other is used by family. Almost every other Bangladeshi I know also has 2 names... but both those names are usually Islamic names, although a few have a western name for their official name. Both of my names are named me after Mughal emporers though.

Is it a similar case for the Chinese, where it's a tradition for them to keep 2 names?

ive known some indians (my neighbors). who changed their last name to Joseph. but still keep their indian last name for indian community stuff

name is a name.

but to be frank and not ignorant, a slanted eyed girl with a name like veronica doesnt really adjust.

i would never change my name. and im gonna give my kids desi names too. fu-k the western names. your name is the only thing ppl know u by. and its very important to keep ur cultural names.

if i name my kid Julia ppl might think she is white b4 seing her, but if i give her a desi name like Zaara, then they atleast know or have some kind of idea of who she is and how they should approach her.

i like desi names, i mean come on u cant beat.. Feroz, Aamir, Zaara, Preety, Diya, Ria, etc.

lol its not tradition for Chinese to have a western name, that was for convenience. when it comes to Chinese names for my family, theres 3 characters. the first one is the last name, or the clan (like, all the Wongs for instance). the second character is the sect or immediate family line. the 3rd is the individual. in my family, the last individual character are characters from an old Chinese poem (for guys only), its been used for 12 generations, and im the last character.

so ya, the 2nd western name is just a recent trend for convenience. quite a few chinese dont have a western name, only the ones born here.

i thought about it, and it's because i go to a cathoic public school.

Oo im interested in your name now =o
Im doing an international study, and all of the Chinese students in my class
have western names. Its just as Midnight Sun said, its for the convenience.

Come to think of it, my father and his brothers and sisters have dutch names
as well as Indian names. HAha dad says that his collegues would mess up the
pronounciation of his name anyways, so he also has a dutch name.

well, i know a lot of indians either shorten or anglicize their names to make it easier to pronounce.

like Krishna --> Kris
Sameer --> Sam
Vinayak --> Vinnie
Rajeev --> Raj

i had an old highschool buddy named sameer. however he kept it that way though.
a lot of other people from other countries shorten the name. they tried to shorten my name, but i told them it just wouldnt sound right because i thought shorterning of names was more of a western thing.

but many times they shorten it to make it easier for the locals if they live in america, or elsewhere.

I also shortened my name to make it easier for others, but the shortened version is also an Indian name.

For example:

Priyanka ----> Priya
Anusuiya---> Anu
Deepali--->Deepa
Ramachandra--->Rama

In that case, making up a new name IMO would make sense so that others don't screw your real name up

But that Islam thing really gets to me though. I mean God doesn't judge you by your name, so why change it? And I have yet to see any one named Eesa (Jesus in Arabic) I see Yunus (Jonah), Yusuf (Joseph), Muhammed, etc. but no Eesa.

I'm Gujaräti, my name is Deven, I got unlucky and my name sounds anglicized.

I have a cousin named Rahul and everyone thinks he's spanish =/

I know right?

Eesa is a nice name. Yeah i dont get it either with the name changing when you
convert

(btw nice way of dodging my question about your name )

I've always wondered why no one has the name Jesus/Isa? Since he's an important figure to both Christians and Muslims, why not?

Maybe I should become the first person in history to name his son "Isa".

I'm not sure why converts change their name to an Islamic name. I think the reason they change their name is to show pride in being Muslim. An Islamic name is supposed to represent a Muslim identity, similar to having a name representing a national identity but on the grounds of religion rather than nationality. It has very little to do with being a good Muslim though. Not all converts change their names, I've met a few Muslims with Western names aswell.

In respnse to earlier statements, although many Chinese people have Western names, at least they don't use English as an official language in China. In India on the other hand, English is spoken a lot more there than any other Asian country. Most of the middle-class people over there speak English just as much as their own language. So it would be wrong to assume that the Chinese aren't proud of their culture, just for having Western names.

thats because business/finance is conducted in english language

arent most classes taught in english after a certain grade? and do more people know hindi than english in india, or vice versa? maybe with so many different languages in india, it's just easier to speak english.

and the reason why english is so commonly spoken in india and not in other countries is because of the british occupation.

Actually its because of North-South differences on national language. Otherwise hindi would have totally replaced English. If it wasn't for the tamilians hindi would have completely replaced English as the business language.

^^i dont know if that's necessarily true, cuz a lot of south indians do know hindi...not all of north india speaks hindi. they might speak languages that are similar, but for the most part, more south indians know hindi that u would think. besides, telagu, which is a south indian language is derived from sanskrit, so it actually has more common words with hindi and other south indian languages, making it easy to learn hindi.

look at mumbai, hyderabad, bangalore and chennai...with the exception of maybe mumbai (since a majority of the ppl there speak hindi), u'll find that a lot of the ppl u encounter in those south indian cities do speak hindi.

so, my point is, that i dont think tamil, or any other south indian languages have been the driving force behind india using english as much as it does. if it weren't for the british colonization of india, indians probably wouldnt speak english any more than any other asian country. besides, most educated ppl in india do know hindi as well as english. students pick a second language to learn in school, and most just pick hindi.

Telugu isn't derived from sanskrit. It has a lot of loan words from sanksrit but it is NOT derived from sanskrit.

Nehru & Gandhi wanted one National language and wanted to completely phase out English and use hindi as both business and official language. If it wasn't for tamilians he would have actually succeeded. Yes, the british colonization was an important reason for knowing english but if Nehru had succeeded he would have completely replaced english with hindi and only a minority of elite ppl would know english.

EDIT: I seriosly doubt there are a lot of hindi speakers in chennai. I have been to chennai and no one would talke to me ! Also Hyderabad has a huge muslim population and that is partly the reason, but hyderabad has more of a urdu flavor rather than hindi. Bangalore has a huge north indian population I guess because of its importance. Mumbai is not south indian nor north indian, but then again it is capital of hindi film industry as such u will have a large population of hindi speakers. Most N.Indian languages are similar and its easier 2 learn hindi. Telugu and hindi are nothing alike, they are worlds' apart.

i didnt know about nehru and gandhi trying to make hindi the official language of india...i actually thought it was, at least unofficially...and now i see ur point about if it wasnt for the tamilians, hindi would be the official language of business.

as for mumbai, ppl in mumbai actually prefer to be considered south indian, and not north indian, even though maharashtra is technically in the center of india.

and as for telagu, it actually is the only south indian language that is derived from sanskrit. none of the other south indian languages are.

EDIT: actually, kkdkckrl, ur right. there are two forms of telagu:
the telangana language that is purely dravidian, and telagu which is a mix of dravidian and sanskrit.

although, telagu speakers in hyderabad are considered "telanagana" because they use a lot urdu words as well. everyone else is considered "andhra" since they speak pure telagu.

and i remember visiting chennai, and remembering the hard time we had communicating, since we knew no tamil. supposedly, tamilians dont like speaking hindi. but in hyderabad and bangalore hindi is pretty much spoken everywhere along with english. but maybe that's because it's more of a cosmopolitan city than chennai. but i'm not sure.

I doubt the Mumbai citizens would consider themselves South Indians, since they usually consider the Mumbai film industy (a.k.a. Bollywood) to be a North Indian film industry, while the Tamil and Telegu film industries are considered South Indian film industries... although that could be because the other North Indian film industries, like the Bengali, Punjabi, Gujurati and Assamese film industries, aren't very popular. I think it's best just to label Maharashtrans as "Central Indians", which they are, since they're bang, right in the middle of India... well almost.

As for Telegu, it was indeed derived from Dravidian but has a lot more Sanskrit influence than the other Dravidian languages, while Tamil is the oldest and purest Dravidian language. In fact, Tamil is second only to Sanskrit as the oldest surviving language in India and Sri Lanka.

I've noticed that some Indians don't even want to pronounce Vijay correctly.

it's not that they dont want to pronounce names like vijay, or ajay correctly, it's just easier for non indians to pronounce those names as "VJ" and "AJ." besides, most indian names are mispronounced by non indians to begin with. after a while, u just get sick of correcting ppl.

have any indian kids noticed in school, when the teacher is reading off the class list of names, there's always a pause before ur name. i always thought that was funny.

I don't see how having a western first name is a equivalent to lack of pride for one's own culture. Did it ever occur to anyone that maybe East Asian immigrants are a merger between Eastern and Western cultures and that is very much possible to be proud of your own native culture as well as the culture in your adopted country? Besides most Asian Americans usually click with each other in groups.

I think the Chinese might actually have more pride in their culture and history than Indians do. It's not just because Indians speak English a lot more than the Chinese but because of something I recently read about India's education curiculum:

India's schoolbook histories:

http://www.rediff.com/news/2003/aug/22kak.htm

India doesn't teach anything about all of the greatest Indian inventors/scientists/mathematicians that contributed to the world but would rather focus on the European inventors/scientists who later claimed those discoveries/inventions instead. It sounds to me like India has a lack of pride in its own history.

Are we talking about comparing Overseas Chinese to Overseas Indians or Chinese from China and Indians from India? Chinese from China are definitely proud and nationalistic to the point of being brainwashed, I don't enough about Indians from India to comment. But from what I see, Indian immigrants are pretty damn proud.

I have friends who are British Born Chinese and British Born Indian. From day one (of knowing her) one of my Indian friends has had a very strong sense of who she is and where she's from. She speaks little (gujurati??), but is proud of her culture and shows it whenever possible. She has her "English" identity at school. My chinese friend on the other hand, (I've known her since we learned to speak) she started off speaking (I think Mandarin?) as well as English, but through ages 6-16 she totally ditched her Chinese identity and went for a totally british one. Now she is re-learning her second language and surrounds herself with chinese friends, her chinese boyfriend (which btw she once said she would never date chinese boys) and has a stronger sense of being part of Chinese culture. Both these girls have anglo names, but as far as I can tell all through school people have acknowledged their foreign backgrounds.

I also have 2 other Indian and Chinese friends who have Indian and Chinese names (and were born in Kenya and Hong Kong), however all 4 of these friends I believe have equal amounts of pride, knowledge and participation in their culture and it's activities.

Therefore, anyone who is trying to argue that one has more than the other is probably basing this on hear-say or people trying to stir things up. And like has been said before: "it is possible to have more than one identity", regardless of race and location. As pure example, I'm sure white people born in Hawaii adopt some of the identity of Hawaiian nationals and so on and so forth. As would Japanese living in Brazil etc.

I think that's what it is. There's no common set of Chinese first names that I'm aware of, like there are sets of Indian or English first names to choose from.

Probably that applies to some other East Asian languages too, besides Chinese.

i swear, david and peter are the most common chinese first names