why need english names?
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i was trying to locate some friends from the past via facebook. i found most, if not all of the chinese now use names like david, sebastian, nancy etc.
as far as i can remember none of my classmates had such names. i know them as tan ah seng, ho yew fai, ting kok kwang etc.
call yourself tan ah seng if you are tan ah seng. not gordan tan. who the **** knows gordan tan is actually the tan ah seng 20-30 yrs ago?
btw, i dont see malays calling herself nancy fatimah bte faisal. why do chinese have to follow anything and everything, angmoh?
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Convenience.
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It's not funny when some angmoh ppl mispronounce ur chinese name... and they like to call u by your chinese surname becoz angmoh surname is behind de...
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Ya lor. I don't know why they have to give english names. At least yours still easy to pronounce. Mine has got something like Tresston, Spykler and all sorts of weird names which I cant even pronounce. I think next time i just call everyone eh eh eh can liao.
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SGF that time oso got one bugger want Japanese name Ichibawa Kaninabe mah........
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it's a way of life la haha.....others have moved on. You just havent. Well, I'm not saying that's wrong....maybe u r more sentimental to your roots than others.
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when culture & mindset changes, one day we may take up Arabic names or Russian names for convenience
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when culture & mindset changes, one day we may take up Arabic names or Russian names for convenience
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ah seng ah beng not in liao mah... ah lian... ah huay... lol...
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Originally posted by Fenixx:
SGF that time oso got one bugger want Japanese name Ichibawa Kaninabe mah........I
ITCHY KIAM PA KNN BAEY
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i want to use my chinese name but somehow, i was given an english name becos they find it easier to pronounce... so...........
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but i hate it and will try to give my chinese name as intro as much as possible next time.
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for convenience? what an excuse!!
there are plenty of people still using their own name.
why dont the caucasians use chinese names so its easier for us to remember them?
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Well, we're communicating in english, aren't we?
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Originally posted by maskedangel:
Well, we’re communicating in english, aren’t we?
我å�¯ä»¥ç”¨å�Žè¯å’Œä½ äº¤è°ˆã€‚ä½ è‚¯å�—？
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lol
me until now no gib myself eng name
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Can't read it on my bb. Sorry. Wouldn't understand it too if the characters were visible..
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Originally posted by dragg:
btw, i dont see malays calling herself nancy fatimah bte faisal. why do chinese have to follow anything and everything, angmoh?
This is partly due to the anglicisation of Singapore by PAP.
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Yes, the heavy angloization process in Singapore.
It is very heavy.
However, I wont comment too much on it.
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Just comment, there's no need to be afraid of the anglo dog Lee Kuan Yew.
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Worst one has to be "Foyce", WTF name is that?
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Originally posted by ditzy:
Worst one has to be "Foyce", WTF name is that?
Got chinese name don't use, use what fuck foyce, like a name of a whore.
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Originally posted by dragg:
i was trying to locate some friends from the past via facebook. i found most, if not all of the chinese now use names like david, sebastian, nancy etc.
as far as i can remember none of my classmates had such names. i know them as tan ah seng, ho yew fai, ting kok kwang etc.
call yourself tan ah seng if you are tan ah seng. not gordan tan. who the **** knows gordan tan is actually the tan ah seng 20-30 yrs ago?
btw, i dont see malays calling herself nancy fatimah bte faisal. why do chinese have to follow anything and everything, angmoh?
To answer your question, we must touch on a bit of history of Singapore.
THE BABAS OF SINGAPORE
What makes Singapore different? The majority of Singapore's population is ethnically Chinese, but Singapore is largely free of corruption, has sound institutions and the rule of law dominates. It's nothing like China. The answer lies in a historical division in Singapore's Chinese community between the babas and the sinkeh. The sinkeh, comprising the majority of the city-state's population, were the recent immigrants from China, or whose parents were born in China. They spoke Chinese, lived like Chinese and considered themselves overseas Chinese. In Indonesia, such Chinese were called the totok.
The babas, on the other hand, also known as Straits Chinese, were Chinese more in name than practice. They were the descendants of the very early Chinese immigrants (Hokkiens from the Fujian province) to the straits settlements of Malaya (Penang, Singapore and Malacca). They assimilated with both the local Malays and the colonising British, whom they especially admired. The babas developed their own culture, cuisine and language - Malay liberally sprinkled with Hokkien.
The sinkeh were the traders, the coolies and the shophouse owners. The babas became the lawyers, the civil servants and the politicians; they attended the local English-language schools run in the tradition of the UK's public schools, and Oxford and Cambridge. If the sinkeh received an overseas education at all, it was in Nanking or another university in China. Although the sinkeh dominated Singapore's population, it was the babas who dominated public decision-making. In effect, a baba minority captured sinkeh Singapore, and that minority's attitudes were more those of Victorian England than China.
It was the babas who were the framers of Singapore's rules and institutions. Many of Singapore's most prominent Chinese have had baba backgrounds. Lee Kuan Yew, who became prime minister of Singapore aged just 35, is the most obvious example. He claims a Hakka heritage, although his upbringing was that of a baba: at home, he spoke English with his parents and baba Malay to his grandparents. "Mandarin was totally alien to me and unconnected with my life," Lee said of his childhood.
For Lee, Chineseness was an acquired skill and later a political necessity. He was not brought up as a Chinese with a focus on China, but as a baba who looked to England. He followed the conventional career path of a baba and went to London to study law. And so Lee Kuan Yew of Singapore became Harry Lee of Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge. His father had given him and two of his brothers English, as well as Chinese, names. Did Lee run Singapore as a piece of Asia mired in Chinese ways? No. He ran it in a manner to which a British colonial administrator would have aspired.
That other great framer of Singapore's institutions, Goh Keng Swee, who rose to become finance minister and deputy prime minister, is the epitome of the baba elite. Goh was born in 1918 in Malacca, the epicentre of baba culture, into a baba family. His parents were English-oriented Chinese Methodists.
The baba influence is now more subtle, but still there. Singapore's current prime minister Lee Hsien Loong has the strongest baba pedigree of any of the country's leaders.
http://www.managementtoday.co.uk/news/648273/
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english names would give special flavour and nothing else...a gal could call herself Pinkie or Faith ..but looks redder than usual and voluptuously unfaithful
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as always, the real issue is a political issue.
Singaporeans don't even know the truth of their own country and leaders.