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It's common for Chinese folks interacting with western (especially English speaking) people to choose a western-sounding name, presumably to sound "less foreign" or just be easier to spell or something. For example, my sales rep at my Shenzhen board house is named Rongkun but goes by Betty in western-leaning circles.
Is this a widespread phenomenon in any other cultural circles? Do, say, Spanish folks working with Egyptian customers ever choose an Egyptian-sounding name to use with them? (I'm sure it happens all the time in random isolated incidents, I'm asking about a broader cultural trend). In particular, curious how common this is outside of the English-speaking world.
@azonenberg it's *very* common in Hong Kong. over half of HK people have either an English nickname or an English surname alias.
@gsuberland I lump that in with mainland China for the most part, although I'm sure it's more common there given the British occupation history.
@azonenberg it's definitely more prevalent in HK than mainland.
just checked the stats, and based on 2015 numbers over 38% of HK residents had an English chosen name that they used preferentially over their legal name.
my neighbours are from HK. one has an English forename by birth, the other uses a chosen English name.
@gsuberland Yeah the clash of western and English cultures in HK was quite interesting to me when I was there for work (back in 2017).
Like, metro announcements in Cantonese/Mandarin/English I mostly expected, bilingual signs in a lot of place I expected.
What threw me the most, honestly, was street naming, Where you can have an intersection of say Maple Street and Fuk Wa Street.
@gsuberland (this is a real place, only a few blocks from Sham Shui Po station where I'd get off)
@azonenberg @gsuberland It’s also fun how some English names don’t work well with local phonetics. When I was traveling to Taiwan frequently for work, my name became 贵格 “Guìgé”. There’s not a syllable with the “cray” sound, so “guì” it is!
Many people we work with take the opportunity to choose a fun name too! One of our long-time customers is a fan of The X Files, so his English name is Mulder.
@azonenberg @gsuberland this is very inline with the like, blade runner cyberpunk city concept lmao. I think that stuff is neat (well not dystopian cities, weird abrupt culture collisions)