How convoluted can your name get? If you have a couple of minutes, I’ll tell you my story.
When I was born, my parents promptly named me and registered my birth just like any law-abiding citizens. What’s so unusual about that? It’s a big deal—given that we’re talking about living in India during a time when many Chinese births were not registered until years later.
Owning an accurate birth certificate was quite an accomplishment…it was, until my parents decided to change part of my name before I enrolled for kindergarten at the local Chinese school. Apparently my generational name—the one that was common to all my sisters, unborn at the time—was in conflict with one of our ancestors in China. My parents didn’t think it was necessary to update my birth certificate though.
The curve ball came when I went to an English school at eight—earlier than most other Hakka Chinese kids my age. Rather than use my birth name, I was enrolled with my revised name spelled phonetically. One could argue that my high school certificate is not mine.
Another twist came about when we were allowed to become legal Indian citizens. The birth certificate became an important document. Only problem was that the person preparing my application added an alias. Now here was the perfect opportunity to right all that was wrong, but no…that would have made too much sense. I'll spare you the details—fodder for another blog perhaps—of how a butchered sound-alike of my name was included into my citizenship documents.
When I immigrated to Canada, I reverted back to my legal given name registered at birth…until I got married and adopted my husband’s surname…but that’s the least convoluted part of this story.Labels: Calcutta, Culture, Family, Hakka, Identity