For getting rid of my chinese name

[TheLoyalWriter]

I moved to the UK from China with family as a teen and have lived there since. When I got married I changed my surname into my husband's and got rid of my Chinese name on my birth certificate and gave myself a middle name. It is mostly because my parents used our Chinese heritage as an excuse to bully and control me when I was younger. None of my kids will have a foreign name from my home country and will be raised British. AIBU? My family is very not pleased about it.

So am I. 🙂

Most people really don't think about it.

Then they get a weirdo like me who after knowing them a few years goes "How come your name is x but your heritage is y?"

But then again I have had people speaking to me in various languages once they have seen my last name.

Gosh this is a complicated situation. With names, I think you should do whatever feels right and most comfortable for you.

Would you like to or want to separate your heritage from your parents behaviour? Or are they so wrapped up together they can’t be?

My DPs rejected their religion and culture completely after their experience of it ruling and wrecking every aspect of their lives until they left home. We were brought up with no cultural knowledge or the very basics about what our religion was about. As adults we feel sad our culture was kept from us . For some reason none of us feel British or as if we blend in here. We don’t know where we fit in at all. But as I get older I feel more connected to it in many ways even though I zero belief in the religious part.

I think kids deserve to know what their heritage is even if they later show zero interest. It is part of them and what came before them and how they fit into it. I included very simple things from our culture into my kids lives and they do with theirs. Whatever our parents shit experience with it, it’s still part of us. I don’t know if that is something you could or would want to do. Just the very basics - where you are from, what it looked like, looking at pics online, foods, what any traditional clothing is like, kids stories etc. obviously if all this sounds painful or not what you want for your family that’s totally ok and your choice but it does seem sad your parents have the power to taint your relationship and your kids relationship with their whole heritage. I’m so sad you went through that. It sounds awful.

OP I know several people who have completely changed their names, sometimes borrowing their new names from other cultures, for various reasons: e.g. they wanted to dissociate from abusive parents; they felt their given names were never 'theirs'; they fell in love with another culture and preferred to name themselves accordingly; or they moved to a country where their given names were unpronounceable or connoted something rude, so they changed them. It's entirely your decision.

As a by-the-way, I visited Hong Kong some years ago and met many Chinese people with very English Christian names, mostly of the type that were popular in Victorian/Edwardian times, e.g. Winston, Gertrude, Cedric, Mabel, etc. They seemed happy with their names! And as long as you are happy with your chosen names, that is all that matters.

You'll make your own choices and do whatever you think is best for your kids, and that's fine. People learn to live with their parents' decisions. They know it comes from love.

I was going to write a long rant, but the main point is that you can paper over everything except physical reality because mirrors and eyeballs exist. You will always be 100% of something, and your kids will always be 50% of something, and you will never understand how they feel about it. When you're mixed, you never perfectly fit in. And 100 percenters will never understand how we feel—not even our parents. I sympathise hugely with your kids. You can't try to whitewash over the Chinese part of someone's identity and expect them never to have any problems.

Y best friend and her husband are Chinese/Hong Kong born but grew up in the UK, they both have western names with Chinese middle names as do their children amd they interchange between both amd in both English and Cantonese, it’s very sweet. Can you do that?

On my birth certificate I have an English first name and a Chinese middle name, well that’s how it has to look but my Father was very much you have two names. I gave my DS my family name as a middle name. We didn’t double barrel it and because of what it is it suits as a middle name.

I was raised with a definite mix of Asian and English culture. Whilst Asian parents can be totally overbearing and I believe you the very liberal parenting of the UK can be too gentle. Somewhere in the middle was where I was raised. It’s probably like an old fashioned English upbringing.

The names of potential children will have nothing to do with how they are raised by you with whatever parenting you decide is right for your family. DS is mixed but has quite an Asian look but is very tall like his white Dad.

OP has already said that Chinese middle names were out of the question.

Up to op what she calls herself and her children and there's no obligation to choose a name that matches your ethnicity.

My uncle chose French names for my BBC cousins. Neither cousins speak French as far as I know although my uncle and dad used to live in a French speaking country, so could be a nod to that.

OP you'll be fine name wise. I'm BBC and officially have a western name and surname (husband's). I felt a bit sad about losing my maiden name and had considered all kinds of double barrels, or me keeping it and just decided not to. Likewise, kids have totally western names. One looks like me, the other like my husband. No-one blinks an eyelid.

If you find linking yourself to Chinese culture painful then give yourself the space needed. I can imagine how your parents may have treated you and the links to Chinese culture. I just cherry pick the bits I like (food, new year etc). If my kids showed great interest in Chinese culture I'd happily encourage and embrace it, but quite frankly, they don't!

You know as well as I do, OP, that the easiest way to learn any language, especially Cantonese, is to learn from birth. It will be very hard for your children to learn if they wait until they are old enough to ask, which will almost certainly be as teenagers or adults.

You are denying them a precious gift which could be a huge advantage to them in life, as well as a way of accessing their own cultural heritage.

You don’t get to determine how they think of themselves and their identity. In fact it’s ( ironically ) a much more Chinese than a European idea - that you can control and shape your children completely.

I suggest that you consider going for counselling, you are making choices that will negatively impact your children to punish your parents. Children should not be used as a weapon.

I think it's fine for you to change your name and give your children whatever names you feel reflect you and your family.
My DSIL is from mainland China, she has a dialect language as her primary language, then Mandarin, then later Japanese followed by English. My DB speaks English as primary language, followed by Japanese, Spanish, Cantonese, Mandarin then French. My DN therefore has been exposed to many languages in his upbringing and been to school in China, England and France. His two primary languages are Mandarin and English, but can get by in his mother's dialect. Not bad at French and German(from school).
He has a fully english name, looks mixed race and considers himself British through and through, but luckily able to converse widely with people when he travels. Currently he's mainly interested in Japanese and Japan, though never taught this language directly as mum and dad used it as "their" language!😁

I’m mixed race. Half white, half something else. My mother did exactly this and I feel completely cut off from half of my identity. I wish I could speak the language, have some cultural knowledge, know some people from my heritage - but I don’t.

I find it genuinely so sad.

You can cut off your family, but why cut off everything Chinese? Even if you don’t want part of it, you should let your future children know about Chinese culture, maybe they could do some language lessons outside the home. Find the things you love about it and celebrate those.

They may look Chinese and may always feel like they don’t belong in their own skin, like I sometimes do.

Don't worry OP, you have no duty to speak your mother tongue to your DC especially since it seems to be associated with bad memories. People with happy childhoods can not understand this. Go ahead and teach your children to be kind, open-minded and curious, that beats a language every day.

If you speak Cantonese, are your parents from Hong Kong rather than mainland China? Because obviously the cultures are very different (although possibly converging more as time goes on). If so, I think there are many things that you could be very proud of from your home culture - and I say that as a westerner raising my child in HK, by choice, since I don’t think the UK has anything to offer the young anymore.

It sounds like any thought of “Chinese culture” will remind you of the pain your parents caused, but they are separate things. Their abuse is not a “Chinese tradition” (though I do admit, Chinese parents can be much harder on their kids than westerners, I would imagine because with hundreds of thousands more in the population, everyone has to try harder to get a decent living, so it comes from a place of love, though it seems the opposite and gets taken way too far).

What I can see from living in a culture that is so vastly different from the UK is that the values are still absolutely admirable - for the average person, family is paramount, people are polite and genuinely want to help each other, old people are respected, crime is extremely low, there is no aggression or anger in the way there is in the UK, there is a sense of community - literally, where I live, you could forget your wallet on a table outside (in one of the many community spaces) and it would still be there in the morning, no one would take it.

Clearly there are political issues and massive imbalances of power - but how different is that really from the UK, with the crappy government and the royal family? I saw someone was arrested during the coronation for holding up a blank piece of paper. Not so different then.

I don’t think it is at all unreasonable to give your children fully British names, it will no doubt make their lives much simpler in the UK. But I would hope that you still teach them that they are part of the whole wealth of Chinese history and fable, it is in their blood and they should be proud! Mooncakes, shadow puppets, dragon dances, boat races, mid-Autumn festival, new year, lycee, rich Chinese and Cantonese cuisine, language, art, architecture, textiles, a population that survived a brutal invasion by Japanese forces (again, if HK) - if you can separate your heritage and what you belong to, from your parents’ abuse, you could maybe reclaim it with your children, and be proud of who you are without it causing so much pain?

Yes my parents are from HK- I had my childhood there and school there was tough a lot of extra-curricular was forced on me to be "normal" (my parents' words).

I have a western first name; I just got ride of the chinese name and gave myself a middle name.

Name your children, whatever makes you feel happy nobody’s business but your own and your partners,
however, a real plus in life for them would be to teach them your native language huge advantage I just do that

My DH has a Chinese name. He doesn't even know how to write it but it's part of who he is. It's not on his British Passport (it's on his Chinese one though). I sometimes call him by it affectionately.

My DS has a Chinese name. He probably can write it but I doubt he'll use it either.

I suspect DH parents would be terribly hurt if we tried to delete these names. They are not their deadnames. And actually occasionally the NHS uses DS Chinese one on paperwork as he used it as his first name for a while. Don't give up culture and traditions - they are an intrinsic part of you even if right now you don't understand that they are.

Oh... And as you Yum Cha eating Char Sui Bau and Siu Mai, you'll realise you can't escape it 😂.

And the kids come out looking incredibly Chinese. I used to get asked if I was the Nanny.

You really can't take the HK out...

when you choose, whatever you choose, I hope it will give you satisfaction and pleasure.
Your ethnic heritage is yours to choose your relationship with it.

Yes, the dna comes down via the parents.

But your connection is just that: yours.
Make your own choice and be happy with it.

Kids really don't care.
You know what is best for your family.
Having 'heritage' as an extra family member can make adolescents love it or loath it in equal measure. Answer questions honestly if asked but chances are they won't ask.... certainly not as younger children.
A secure loving home is all they need and I'm sure you and your OH can manage that ok (you definitely know what not to do👍).
All the Best

Is it possible your parents clung to their Chinese heritage so adamantly because they felt they were a bit lost when they emigrated, and it gave them a sense of stability when everything else in their lives had changed?

What they are dealing with is a very common sense of cultural dislocation that can cause family rifts like the one you're facing. In response to a huge change, they took refuge in a heightened identification with their ethnicity, and also in a heightened desire to control whatever they could control in their lives.

They fear losing you on top of the other loss they have experienced, and your choice of a new name and identity is basically the stuff of nightmares for them.

I know you didn't ask the question that this answer is appropriate for, but I feel you could find therapy beneficial. You could explore what's behind the reactivity you are all experiencing and find healthy ways to deal with parents who don't seem able to see you as a fully three-dimensional individual.

If you don’t speak French fluently and aren’t living in France they won’t end up bilingual.

Its almost impossible to give kids fully bilingual capabilities when living in the U.K. unless you speak the other language full time at home and are quite strict about it.

French also isn’t that useful (I am bilingual French) unless you have family there. Its not a worldwide language.

I think you are denying your entire heritage based on your parents abuse. And by extension are denying your kids their heritage too.

if your DH parents are abusive will you also
deny his and your kids connections to the U.K.?

and one more- I have two sets of couples where one partner is SE Asian and one is white British. One set of kids are white skinned with darker hair. But look entirely white British. The other family both kids are dark skinner and look entirely SE Asian. Genetics is not always going to work the way that suits you.

100% this.

Xsquared..I an English Anglo Saxon. My friend is Chinese. Her children are born here. When I think of the I think of a British person whose mum was Chinese.

In rejecting the Chinese aspect of your (future?) children's heritage, are you not simply mirroring your parents' controlling use of ethnicity, to control your own children? By assuming they'd only wish to accept Britishness? It's two halves of the same coin.

Your children's ethnicity is broader than your own, and I don't think it's anyone's right to curtail how they experience all parts of that as they choose. To limit their knowledge of their Chinese ancestry may lead to them feeling very untethered as adults, without the context and knowledge of such a huge part of their family history/cultural stuff.

Imagine if they had their own children in future, and raised them in a very Chinese-centric way and denied their Britishness, how would you feel? I wouldn't want to risk making your issues with your parents into future issues with your own children.