What do you think if a person uses an English name instead of his own name?

[emjan]

For example, if someone's real name (not English) is hard to pronounce for English speaking people, he chooses an English name and introduced himself as a John (John is not his real name in ID).
Would you be bothered with it? Or would you be more happy as the name John is easier to pronounce?

Thanks.

Poster above me

Vixx maybe it is because if they are from another culture most of the names they know from tv movies etc are old fashioned?

I've met lots of Hong Kong Chinese folk who have chosen English names - usually quite dated, Seventies names like Raymond, Yvonne, Alan and Elaine. Their Chinese names are ALWAYS nicer. I went to school with a HK Chinese girl whose Chinese name was beautiful but went by the name of Fanny (which, if you don't know, OP, is slang for female genitalia)! You can imagine how this went down in a comprehensive school in the early 1980s.

I think it's a shame to change your name for fear of people not being able to pronounce it. Why not abbreviate it to something easy to say, like Gok Wan has done? I believe his real name is Khowkhyn but everyone can say Gok, wherever they are from.

If somebody said "hi, I am 'Chinese-name', but all my friends call me bob", I would assume bob was your nick-name, and that you wanted to be called bob.

I have a name that British people often struggle with. It was a pain as a child, but as an adult I'm proud of it and wouldn't change it.

I think its a shame that people feel that they have to change something as fundamental as their name in order to be understood/accepted, but I wouldn't judge an individual for doing it.

I often think it's a pity when people feel they have to do this. I know it's very common practice but to me it says "I don't think you are interested in knowing the real me, just an anglicised version of me" to use a name that isn't really yours. Yes we will probably mispronounce your name at first. You'll probably have some pronunciation errors too - that's OK, neither of us should mind that. We should trust each other enough to be genuine, including using genuine names. If you don't use your real name it will always add an extra distance to our friendship.

Sorry for the rant but I work somewhere where there are are lots of Chinese people who have adopted English names like Mavis or Bruce and you know that this name was never part of their identity until 3 weeks ago when they got off the plane and I wish it was possible for me to say this to them but it wouldn't be appropriate.

When I say 'a culture that is not shy about making a mouthful of names' I have a mental image of someone repeating my name, as if listening to it in all its weirdness in their head, saying it again to fully explore its strangeness, with another repetition to make sure it was exactly as odd as they thought it was the first time. Trying out your pronunciation of someone's name like that is the equivalent of pointing and staring. What it tells the other person is 'you are alien'.