I think that in a rational society everyone should feel free to choose their name, and doing so should be a normal and expected rite of passage.
It makes way more sense to choose the sound people make when they refer to you, than having your parents choose it for you before you’re even a person yet.
In Worst Korea at about 10 or 11 years old kids choose their “English name” for foreigners to use. This is terrible in theory because of the colonial nature of refusing to pronounce Korean names properly, but hilarious in practice because it means you meet kids with names like “chocolate” or “cake” because it’s something they like.
Asian people
trans people: having inspired English names
Partner knew two Chinese dudes in college who roomed together and chose the names Action and Lancelot. Hard to beat that probably.
I’m imagining a Chinese cartoon about an American guy named Action Lancelot who rides a motorcycle and eats nothing but cheeseburgers.
Action Lancelot and the Adventures of Burgerlandia
NES game Clash at Demonhead has the main character’s name as “BANG”
I mean they had some terrible ones as well. The Korean woman who first explained it to me had chosen “Elizabeth” after the fucking Queen, so we all just used her Korean name instead.
Reminds me of Starcraft handles being mostly one syllable English words - Flash, Rain, Queen, and so on.
Being in western communities with high numbers of Asians, I remember the name “kevin” a lot in the 90s
Most Koreans I knew chose from the 10th most popular to 30th most popular white people names, and that’s it. So like Brian, Amy, Emily. Except for one guy who just picked a Chinese-sounding name that sounded like a Mortal Kombat character, because he could. Like I don’t wanna dox myself but it might as well have been Chang Tsung, It was pretty badass tbh