"He, as in the pronoun He"

Names. One of the first things given to you in this world; one of the first things you say to a new friend. Names are pretty important.

My mandarin name is 何丽智. The first character being my surname, the second meaning ‘pretty’ and the third meaning ‘smart’. As you can tell, my parents were really manifesting good vibes for me. My Mandarin name sounds like Liz in English, so that was my parent’s top name of choice. But then they realized that my full name would have been 5 letters, and ended up going with the longer version of Liz; Elizabeth! And they also learned I would share the same name with the Queen of England; which was apparently a huge plus in their books.

All my life, I have introduced myself as Elizabeth He. “He as in the pronoun he” I would say when I was asked for my details while checking out at a new store. I never really minded the westernized pronunciation of my name because I assumed that it was too difficult for people to learn the correct pronunciation. From an early age, I was told by my family just to accept the pronunciation because it is important not to draw too much attention to yourself; AKA don’t set yourself up to be bullied. To this day, I still have this mindset. LinkedIn recently introduced a feature where you can add the pronunciation of your name. While I know that using this feature will help people pronounce my last name correctly, part of me doesn’t want to.

I know that many Asian Canadians can relate. When I was still going on exchange in the winter semester, I interviewed a girl from China to sublet my room. Her name is AnXin. We talked a little bit about our names and I mentioned that she had one of the prettiest names I’ve ever heard. One day, we hopped on a zoom with my housemates so that they could all meet and get to know one another. I taught my housemates the correct pronunciation of her name, knowing that that was something that I would appreciate. But when she hopped on the zoom, she introduced herself as Alice.

From then on, I began to wonder why Asian Canadians westernize their names; is it because we want to, or because it saves the hassle of clarifying yourself over and over again? A person’s name is carefully curated by loved ones and represents their culture, origin, and overall identity. The significance of a name makes every mispronunciation that much more disheartening to hear.

Because I have lived this experience, I always make the effort to clarify the pronunciation of a new friend’s name. This is something that I’ve recently started doing and I can literally see on people's faces how much they appreciate that simple question. To all you conversationers reading out there, I encourage you to start doing this as well; to make someone away from home feel recognized and respected.

I was inspired to write this post after coming across a project called ReClaim your Name. This initiative was started by an organization called Elimin8Hate and invites anyone who identifies as Asian Canadian to participate by sharing the story of their name. It provides an opportunity to reflect on the pressure many Asian people feel to westernize their names to be accepted. I encourage you to learn more about this movement and Elimin8Hate by navigating to the donate tab.

Thank you for reading :)