Name

My parents were born in China and immigrated to the US before I was born. They gave me two names, one Chinese and one English. My Chinese name, 张楚玉, has three parts: 张 (zhāng) is my surname that I got from my dad. It is a very common surname, so much so that when I was a kid, I would hear about other people with the name 张 from the news and listening to my parents’ conversations and think, “They have the same name as me, so they must be family!” My given name, or “first” name, is 楚玉 and was chosen by my mom. 玉 (yù) is a generational name that I share with my brother. 楚 (chǔ) comes from my mom’s birthplace. She was born and raised in Hubei, a province in central China. During the Zhou dynasty, that region was part of the Chu state (楚国 in Chinese), and the 楚 in 楚国 became part of my name. It feels pretty cool to be named after an ancient Chinese state, but I also like that my name strengthens my connection with my mom, as I’m literally named after her home.

My full English name is Chuyu Lynette Zhang. My first and last name are romanized versions of their Chinese counterparts, and my middle name, chosen by my dad, is of Welsh origin and means “nymph” or “idol”. I asked my dad why he chose Lynette and he said he just thought it sounded cool, so there’s not much of a story there. (I sometimes wonder if he gave me that name to mess with my mom, because her accent makes it hard for her to pronounce L’s correctly. If we’re in public and someone asks her for my name, she usually just has me say it.)

I do have some thoughts about my legal first name being Chuyu, so I suppose I’ll talk about that.

I often wish that my parents had made Lynette my official first name because having Chuyu as my first name is annoying for a variety of reasons. First of all, I think “Chuyu” sounds weird in English. Part of my dislike probably stems from being too used to how it sounds in Chinese, but I also feel that the repeated “u” vowel feels awkward and over-enunciated when said with an American accent. “Chuyu” is my name on school and medical records as well, so when teachers and medical staff first meet me, they call me Chuyu. That leads me to another issue: many non-Chinese speakers can’t pronounce my name correctly the first time, so I have to correct them or tell them to call me Lynette instead. Doing this a few times isn't too bad, but having to constantly restate my own name gets rather irritating. Sometimes I think about legally changing my first name to Lynette to make my life easier, but at this point it might cause confusion with college apps and financial stuff, so I guess I’ll have to wait until later.