'The last thing I wanted was to be othered by yet another uncontrollable aspect of my identity' (lucylau)
I remember the day I got my name—well, my second name, anyway. It was a muggy day at the tail end of summer in Ottawa and my mom and I had a meeting scheduled with Ms. Brown, the teacher whose junior kindergarten classes I would attend beginning that September. I was 4 years old and this would be my first time in school. I followed my mother obediently as Ms. Brown showed us around her classroom, eventually guiding us to a cubby.
I didn’t realize it then, but it was in that moment that my North American or “Western” identity was born—one that I would go on to nurture and embrace, even if it meant suppressing and completely disassociating myself from my Chinese roots. At home—and on my birth certificate and government-issued documents—I continued to be referred to by my given name, Ming Yin, the transliteration of my Cantonese name, 明影.
While, yes, it’s common for Chinese-Canadian folks to be recognized by two names, going by Lucy didn’t make me feel any more “normal” while growing up. Some Chinese-Canadians have only their Western name listed on official documents as their given name; others have a middle name that is a transliteration of their Chinese name.
Occasionally, my Chinese name was met with snickers; other times, it was met with confused looks, my fellow classmates craning their necks around the room as if to see who could possess such a strange moniker. The predominantly white faces I saw on TV and in the issues of Seventeen I rabidly consumed were confirmation enough that I belonged to a seemingly less desirable population; I didn’t need my name reminding me, too.
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