Maybe the reason that the Chinese have no problem using the surname/first name convention is because the names are so short. Li Po. Dao Yung. Wang Chung. (Just kidding on that last one; I think it is Chinese for “have fun.”)
With such short names, they can afford to throw in the last name first. Compare the Chinese names to the gold medalist lady weight-lifter from Thailand: Prapawadee Jaroenrattanatarakoon. Really.
This raises a lot of questions for me, and observations. First, is Prapawadee a common name in Thailand? What do her friends call her? Prap? Prapa? Dee? Was she a fan of What’s Happening? Do you think she had to write “Prapawadee J.” on her papers at school? How old was she before she knew how to spell her own last name? My first, middle and last names combined are fewer letters than her last name alone which has 21 letters. 21! That is three really good Scrabble turns! Does she have a middle name? Is it Jo or something short?Does she realize that she could rearrange the letters in her name to read "Rate a dark potato area near Japan, now?" Probably not.
1 comment:
Pretty funny Dave.
I think Wang Chung does not mean have fun, at least not in Mandarin.
I will bet that in Thailand, they do not use English Letters. Nor do they in China, so it does not matter how short the names are spelled in English in Thailand or China.
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