Re: Name
Viola Li
Viola Li is a recent first-generation graduate of Union College in Schenectady, New York, where she studied biology and Chinese language. Encouraged by many mentors at Union, she is further exploring a newfound passion for creative writing. Following her gap years, Viola intends to pursue graduate study in literature and composition, with a special focus on diasporic experiences and stories.
Abstract
As the diverse world grows more interconnected with one another, we frequently promote the endless possibilities of connection and learning that comes between cross-cultural, social, and even economical exchange. However, the paradox of a society such as the United States being one of the most heavily diverse nations comes with the unique elements of rigidity; much progress still needs to be made to promote education and understanding of differing cultures and identities. My piece, a short story titled “Re: Name,” describes the challenge of having a distinctly Chinese name that not only limited my opportunities, but also contributed to a struggle between myself, my family, and my culture, as I fought to justify enduring the adversity that comes with a romanized Chinese name which did not fit the conventions of the English language and alphabet. Ultimately, the piece follows my drastic journey into legally changing my name and the memories which can become attached to a particular name. Although the piece describes my decision to change my name and thus seemingly changing my entire identity, it also discusses how people can both be defined by their name as well as be more than their name. I wish for my piece to leave readers with the question of why my story was necessary at all, and reflect upon the power of something as simple as a name’s contribution to personal identity and memory. If our names are who we are, then our memories start with our names.
Re: Name
The Names I Respond To
With my mind on how to best present a professional plea to my college for more financial aid, I had nearly forgotten that I asked my father to pick up my birthday cake from the grocery store. He carried the large tray on his palm as a waiter would, kicking off the soft snow that he tracked inside before setting the cake down before me. Everything was relatively normal, spare the surgical face mask that dangled on his wrist. I was relieved that the pandemic had shut down high school in time for my birthday, partially because I desperately needed a break, but mostly because I did not want a fourth year of the same embarrassing birthday mishap.
“You don’t like the frosting color?” he asked, noticing that I seemed less than enthused by the marble cake. “We can douse it with sprinkles to try and cover the pink up if it’s not the shade you were hoping for.”
I shook my head, reassuring him that I was simply tired, pointing to my spreadsheet of finances as the cause. He appeared unconvinced, but did not press further and went to check on his egg tarts in the oven. My father, a former teaching assistant, chose the culinary arts over his mathematics education when he moved to the United States to earn enough money towards treatment for his mother’s illness. Over the years, I have heard countless stories of abandoned dreams from the many Chinese immigrants within my parents’ social circle, but my father never expressed such regret towards starting from scratch.
Frequently I wished for a fresh start like him, not because I was disappointed in what I had or had not accomplished, but rather because of the unintentional restriction that my parents blessed me with from birth. When my mother fibbed to a four-year-old me that we were going to Disney World for a vacation to cover for our permanent move to the United States, she likely envisioned a life of greater comfort and opportunity for us. While a Cape Cod-style house in Albany, New York is certainly more comfortable than a crumbling brick home with a leaky tin roof and no air conditioning during the scorching Guangdong typhoon season—and I certainly would not have made it past middle school had I stayed due to financial troubles—I carried with me a piece of my Chinese identity that has haunted me for over a decade.
I took one long look at this curse, staring down the cursive buttercream lettering that celebrated my landmark 18th birthday.
Happy Birthday Quin Lin!
My name was spelt wrong again. Perhaps I could have moved on like the countless times I had before and simply attributed it to the conventions of the English language that were embedded like muscle memory into people’s hands, but I noticed the order form that I wrote tucked underneath the tray:
Please write: “Happy Birthday Qian Lin!” Note: The name is spelt “Qian Lin,” please do not make any changes to the spelling
I never grew used to having my name changed by others to how they thought it was likely spelled. I asked my father to come over and look at the cake, watching his smile drop apologetically.
“I’m sorry I didn’t double check before I brought it back.” He was frustrated behind his calmness. “We can scrape it off or do whatever you like with it. If you don’t want it at all I can bring it to work for everyone.”
Envy was often my name when the subject of birthdays rolled around. Such a personalized and special holiday it is in my eyes, a day of celebrating another wonderful year of achievements and memories made by someone. When we fill in the blank at the height of the happy birthday chorus, we celebrate not only the named person, but also the life attached to that name.
I knew nothing about whatever life “Quin Lin” had. But regardless, happy birthday, and here’s to another year of exciting opportunities for them.
Without any hesitancy, I decided to have my father treat himself and bring the cake to work while I used the leftover ice cream in our freezer to make my own makeshift birthday sundae. My mother woke up as my father was getting himself ready for another long shift at the restaurant and leaned her head out of the window when she noticed us loading the cake into the trunk of his car. My father informed her of the problem, and she snapped at him without hesitation.
“You just had to go and name her that? You couldn’t have picked something that Americans could at least process as being someone’s name?”
My name was inspired by my grandmother, meaning ‘beautiful jade.’ Unfortunately, its Romanized form, Qian Lin, is unintentionally difficult for non-Chinese speakers to pronounce and write.
“When we became citizens, we should have just given her an English name and called it a day! Save us the hassle and she wouldn’t always whine and mope about herself! It’s so annoying!” my mother yelled at my father before retreating into her room.
“Do you feel that way?” my father asked me.
“That way?”
“Like your life would have been better with a different name?”
“A lot of the time… A lot of the time I wish you just gave me a normal name.” Looking back, I find the prospect disheartening but also truthful. The idea of “normal” for anything is highly subjective, dependent on what the standards or expectations of a given scenario may be. I am sure that if we never went to “Disney World” and happily spent our days in China, I would likely consider myself to be “normal.”
“I see.” my father replied. He later expressed his regrets and condolences for “accidentally sabotaging you,” which left a chronic pit of guilt within me for quite a while. I imagine no parent takes pride in creating more problems for their children, especially with something as innocent and meaningful as a name choice.
“I want to change my name.”
I want to try and make this piece of my identity more palatable, I meant.
That was my 18th birthday present. Perhaps if I had gotten my license by then, I may have woken up to a bright bow sitting on the hood of our slowly rusting but enduring Honda CRV, but instead my father bought me a new ink cartridge to wake up our hibernating printer, and we printed out every single form required to legally change my name.
The first people I shared my plans with were my friends. While they were preparing to use the COVID-19 lockdown to establish healthy exercise routines or rediscover hobbies that school had forced on the back burner, I was rushing against the clock to change my name before I started college. I wished for nothing more than to have an entirely fresh start into this new incoming phase of my life. One of my good friends asked me why I was going through with the change, and why I was still letting her and those close to me refer to me as Qian Lin.
“Why not just have a nickname for everyone new that you meet in the future so you can still have an easier time without dealing with all the long legal things?” she asked me. “Or go full steam ahead, and have none of us ever call you Qian Lin again?”
Her question left me at a crossroads. Would I be abandoning the life I had with my old name once this was all finalized? Moving forward, would I only associate myself with my new name? I was conflicted, because while Qian Lin was hard to spell, hard to pronounce, and always drew an awkward silence when teachers read attendance sheets, Qian Lin had achieved so much and made so many memories. It was the name I had when I received the New York State Comptroller Award in the eighth grade. It was the name printed on my Six Flags season pass that promised a summer of thrills. It was the name of someone who had loved, hated, laughed, cried, achieved, failed, and lived.
Yet Qian Lin was also the name that followed me like a gloomy cloud, ready to rain on me at any second. I remembered the times that I was bullied for my name, how the strange cruelty of young minds led to a school-wide gag where a teacher would laugh awkwardly, muttering “I'm going to butcher this one,” before a student would interrupt and say that it was pronounced “Chink Lin.” I remembered how a visit to the hospital became a nightmare as the staff spelt my name wrong and could not verify my insurance. I remembered how my family rejoiced at my winning a scholarship which would have covered my entire first year of college, only to lose it upon a wrong spelling of my name on the check that neither the bank nor organization agreed to resolve. As much as I valued the memories of my name, I always resented them more.
There are even smaller things in life which I never gave much thought to until I was considering my name change. While my friends would grab a drink each time we ventured to the mall, I would bring my own water bottle, too embarrassed by the ways my name was misspelled and mispronounced by baristas. I was frequently irked by something as tiny as my hard-earned smartphone’s refusal to acknowledge my name as is, consistently correcting my name into similar words. The small, squiggly red line that marks foreign words appears underneath my name, even visible now as I am writing, reminding me that I do not quite belong.
My mother was the primary supporter of my entirely new beginning, citing that any attachment I held to my name and the memories tied to it did not have to disappear, but that the longer we waited, the more memories I would associate with something that needed to be retired. She despised having to constantly correct people as much as I did, and we appeared to always be on the same wavelength: “normal,” whatever that meant, made life easier. When I confessed to my father that a beautiful name, reflective of my heritage and genealogy, was worth less than a “normal” name, I accepted that my resilience against adversity had expired for now.
My name change was finalized one week after I started college, and within that week, I felt the transition hit me like a car striking a firefly on the freeway. Not having to interact with many people nor meet new faces during the pandemic, I had not yet practiced introducing myself as a new person. In the large lecture hall, I shyly stood towards the end of the line, running through the different ways I could say the same four words over and over again in my head. Late at night, the college arranged for my scholars program cohort to introduce ourselves to one another. Our dean asked us to state our names, majors, hometowns, and the origins of our names as an ice breaker. Many students discussed how their parents named them after something meaningful, but when the time came for me to introduce myself, I was surprised at how smoothly my new name rolled off the tongue, and I explained that I chose my new name myself. Our dean was intrigued and spoke to me afterwards, suggesting that I write myself a letter to read when I was a graduating senior. He told me to write down all that I hoped my new beginning would bring, and what I hoped to achieve as a first-generation college student, as a Union College scholar, and finally, as Viola.
That letter is in my possession once more following his departure from his role, and I set Viola three goals:
Pump up your resume and skill set for medical school.
Relearn Chinese and go abroad.
Make a name for yourself.
I accomplished two out of three of my goals: the most important two, now that I look back on my journey. For the curious, a medical profession and I went together as well as water and oil. My last two goals went hand in hand. To accept and create this new chapter of Viola, I could not entirely neglect Qian Lin’s origins. To do so would be akin to writing a story from the middle without any context for what has come before, and what the present and future must build off of. I nearly buried most of my Chinese identity during my formative years due to circumstances beyond my name—a story for another day’s pages—but seeing as I would now present myself as Viola and not Qian Lin, my Chinese identity was no longer bold and forefront, and thus I allowed myself to nurture it in peaceful quietness. Qian Lin was now just a secondary name, perhaps reserved for few.
Ironically enough, college was also the first time a teacher said my original name correctly, Chinese tones and all. It caught me off guard on the first day of class, when my White Chinese professor pronounced Qian Lin as if she had known me for decades. For a moment there, the classroom in my eyes stripped itself of the whiteboards, desks, and technology; I felt as if I was in a bare-bones room like the storage corner of my grandmother’s home, hearing my name be called with such a flutter and accent of gentleness and familiarity. Qian Lin, and all the memories stored in that name, burst open and painted this small classroom. Yes, I decided to keep Qian Lin for only my Chinese classes, since I already had a Chinese name, but beyond convenience’s sake, I later reflected on this class as carving the safe space I never had growing up, where for the first time I suddenly felt that I was not a grammatical mistake, but rather a person with a name. To my teacher, it must have been another routine roll call. To me, it was a rare moment of acknowledgement for my other—and perhaps not so irksome after all—name.
Gradually, I carved memories into my whole self, not necessarily solely towards one particular name. Qian Lin led her own independent research project on English education for immigrants; Viola enthusiastically studied evolutionary biology, playing with little fruit flies in the lab. Qian Lin studied abroad in Taiwan and fell madly in love with the Taipei metro; Viola presented stories and made audiences laugh with the tale of how she became best friends with the student who totaled her new car on his first day driving. Ultimately, the memories attached to my names were memories attached to me. “Me” is both Qian Lin and Viola, with all the lessons I have ever learned bundled up into a nice package.
When graduation rolled around, the name on my diploma read as follows: Viola Qian Lin Li.
How strange. I have spent so long running away from Qian Lin and what she initially represented: trouble, anxiety, and shame. That must have changed.
My curious father asked me why I would choose to add Qian Lin back into my name if it caused me so much trouble. I suppose after experiencing life with a “normal” name, I now had the privilege to selectively enjoy my original name as well. The doors that closed for Qian Lin opened for Viola, and now both could walk through together. I leaned on my father’s shoulder to relieve the developing ache from my high heels, basking under the shade of the freshly trimmed tree, when we saw my mother excitedly running towards us, waving a giant bouquet of cherry red roses and carnations in her hand.
“They spelt it right and I didn't even have to spell it out for them, I just told them your name!” She eagerly showed me the flowers she had purchased, complete with a customized celebratory card with my name, written by the calligrapher. There were no ink marks of hesitation, no bleeding where pens may stop to reconsider their strokes, just a cleanly curled message of congratulations.
Happy graduation Viola!
Truthfully, I do not look back and wish I endured more years simply being Qian Lin, nor do I necessarily push those who faced the same adversity to change their names. The intimate understanding of ourselves and all the pieces that slowly add to our ever-growing puzzles always returns to the core and root to one title: our names. In a beautiful and perfect world, names may be just a cluster of letters that correlate to an individual, but in this world, names may become hindrances against an individual. From discrimination to personal dissatisfaction, the precious title for a folder of memories that is a name quickly deteriorates the spirit. How are we to appreciate the lessons learned and roads taken when it may be humiliating to attach our names onto these experiences? How is it that there exists such a thing as an unfair name, where a name bestowed upon birth brings drawbacks and disadvantage with age?
In a perfect world, perhaps I would not have taken such a non-traditional path to simplify my documentation, essentially making myself easier to process. However, my new name gave me the advantages that I had always wished for. No longer did I question whether a nurse had attempted to call me into the examination area as they repeated sounds that did not come close to my name. No longer did I need to waste time disputing the way I spell my own name to companies and organizations who modified this piece of my identity without permission. No longer was my name unserious and not “normal,” at least for the scenario in which I live in now.
The scenario in which I live in now happens to accept Viola more than Qian Lin, so I am still living more dominantly with my new name. However, not to ever forget her, I let Qian Lin join me for a presentation of my writing at my college’s annual symposium. Halfway through my presentation, I revealed to the audience my double identity. One curious audience member asked me a question that I used to ask myself over and over, and occasionally still ask:
“Which name do you answer to?”
“I answer to both.” I said. “Both names' histories are forever tied to me.”
Not that I wish to rid myself of either.