A Texas lawmaker has suggested Asian-Americans change their names to make voter identification easier:
A North Texas legislator during House testimony on voter identification legislation said Asian-descent voters should adopt names that are “easier for Americans to deal with.”
The comments caused the Texas Democratic Party on Wednesday to demand an apology from state Rep. Betty Brown, R-Terrell. But a spokesman for Brown said her comments were only an attempt to overcome problems with identifying Asian names for voting purposes.
The exchange occurred late Tuesday as the House Elections Committee heard testimony from Ramey Ko, a representative of the Organization of Chinese Americans.
Ko told the committee that people of Chinese, Japanese and Korean descent often have problems voting and other forms of identification because they may have a legal transliterated name and then a common English name that is used on their driver’s license on school registrations.
So many names, so little time. Personally, I don’t know what the big deal is… or more to the point, I don’t know why one’s legal name isn’t used on driver’s licenses and school registrations.
But I digress:
Brown suggested that Asian-Americans should find a way to make their names more accessible.
“Rather than everyone here having to learn Chinese — I understand it’s a rather difficult language — do you think that it would behoove you and your citizens to adopt a name that we could deal with more readily here?” Brown said.
Brown later told Ko: “Can’t you see that this is something that would make it a lot easier for you and the people who are poll workers if you could adopt a name just for identification purposes that’s easier for Americans to deal with?”
It’s a shame — Ellis Island officials used to provide this service free of charge (well, OK, maybe they didn’t).
(HT to readers)
{ 40 comments… read them below or add one }
One of the problems I run into is that the Romanized names they give me to put on their documents does not match the Romanized names on their passports. There have even been a couple of times when their names were different on their passports and on the English-language documents from other government sources.
Some Asians do go the “Gianna” Jun (Jeon Ji-hyun, AKA; Wang Ji-hyun) and take a stage name that Americans and other westerners can more easily deal with. If what Brown said was just a suggestion, then it is hardly a big deal since Asian-Americans do it all the time already. If she was suggesting a government mandated name change (which does not appear to be the case) then she deserves the virtual tar and feathers she is about to receive.
“they” = my students going for training in the USA
Years ago there was bit of a tiff with a Korean of the surname O and a state gov’t (Ohio, if memory servers me right). When Mr. O attempted to obtain state-generated documents his one-letter surname would be rejected. The programmers had conspired to keep the one-letter-surname-having Asian man down. A clear solution would have been to add another letter such as h, to create Oh. This clearly was wasn’t clear to Mr. O. He sued. He lost. He changed his surname to O’Shaughnessy. Hope he enjoys typing/writing that one out.
Of course, we melanin-deficient types have some pretty hard-to-tackle names, too. John Shalikashvili, anyway?
BTW, here’s the NYT story on Mr. O — pretty funny, actually:
http://www.nytimes.com/1991/08/28/us/why-o-why-doesn-t-that-name-compute.html
Gadzooks! Two of them!
Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free… and your people only named Smith, Brown or Johnson.
“Betty Brown” is a difficult name for me. I had much trouble typing it. Perhaps she could change it to “Betty Shitforbrainspolitican” which is a common Welsh name.
Way back when, before I lived in or knew anything about Korea, I had a situation with a co-worker in the US. Her name was 유진 and she had chosen to romanize it to Eugene. You can imagine what kind of reactions that got.
“Eugene” of SES fame did the same thing: http://www.badadiva.com/forum/showthread.php?t=29
is this by any chance referring to Chinese style Chinese/Korean/Vietnamese names?
Fook Ho
Ho Kim
Lai Lai
what happenned to the ‘half the first name’? We have a dozen ‘Ho Kim’s. How do we tell them apart? Hojun Kim would have solved the problem versus Hosan Kim, etc.
follow what the Japanese are doing.
*sigh*
At least this Brown idiot is in Texas, where it’s a lot easier to round up people like her, give em a quick trial with a defense lawyer who sleeps through the 20-minute trial, and then execute them. May as well get started. Thanks, Texas, it’s a tough job but someone’s gotta do it. (btw – is W back in the state yet?)
Being a 1st-gen American (2nd-gen immigrant) with a last name that confuddles people…
…actually, no. I can’t take what she said without being somewhat irked and insulted. “_You_ and _your_ citizens?” Are we not American citizens, but something different? Other, perhaps, like how we used to be on those diversity forms?
#12: She’d have to first get a massive tan, mate
I think a lot of folk were somewhat irked and insulted.
#5: The funniest part of the story was when they referred to his sister Jackie. Thanks heaps for the chuckle.
The way she put it was pretty irking and insulting… But I have, on occasions, used the pseudonym “Ned” at Starbucks in order to spare the poor worker from embarrassing herself by horrendously mispronouncing my name then sheepishly announcing the name of the coffee instead.
Don’t most Koreans have ‘Christian’ names, anyway?
I would take offence at the fact that she targeted Asians for having strange names when there are stranger names in Hebrew, Russian and Arabic. At least the Asians have similar surnames.
Yes, he is. You’re still welcome to that hot cup of STFU about him and American politics in general. Meddling foreigners like you helped elect the current numbnuts. Thanks for that.
Well, for what it’s worth, you can email her from here [ http://www.house.state.tx.us/members/email.php?dist=4&rep=betty.brown ], though the direct address is easily obtained from the URL.
As far as the current Dear Leader, let’s not speak of him or the reign of terror the former Dear Leader had the last eight years. It’s not germane.
From the story on foxnews.com:
Just to show you that there are stupid statements being made on both sides. It’s weird that this guy refers to something while clearly being ignorant of it. Ellis Island was notorious for chopping up the last names of immigrants, especially immigrants from the Russian Empire and Eastern Europe.
If it were up to me, everyone would simply get a 9 digit hexadecimal serial number with a corresponding bar code stamped on their foreheads, which allows for 68719476736 unique identifiers.
I don’t see the problem – the same thing’s been done to me for years here, by everyone from government officials to banks to employers. It hasn’t been done to piss me off (although it does), but to expedite their processing of my information. And my name’s not unusual at all.
In the end, since they can’t get it right, I don’t care. What I care about is that I get every advantage I can, and if that means that other people are going to fuck up my name because they lack the cranial capacity to process names in the same way that others use them for themselves, so be it. I don’t care about them beyond how they can benefit me.
Friends, family, and the people I know and care about are different, of course. I want those who care about me, and whom I care about, to use my name correctly. But everyone else? Fuck if I care, so long as they give everything I’ve got coming to me and are not insulting while they fuck up.
“Betty Brown” is a difficult name for me. I had much trouble typing it. Perhaps she could change it to “Betty Shitforbrainspolitican” which is a common Welsh name. – R. Elgin
LOL! Of course, in Welsh “Shitforbrainspolitican” is pronounced . . . [wait for it] “Brown”.
Actually Brendon, dumbass conservatives like you helped elect Obama by blindly backing the previous numbnuts through eight years of dumbfuckery that drove the Republican brand into the ground so far that it won’t recover for a decade.
By all means though, keep blaming “meddling foreigners” instead of yourself for making the shit sandwich you and your Glenn Beck-loving pals are now eating if it makes you feel better.
Netizen Kim is the Antichrist!
(While we’re on the tangential subject of Obama-bashing)
I was wondering who did this:
http://briandeutsch.blogspot.com/2009/04/jeonjus-jeongdong-cathedral-vandalized.html
Never a good idea to sign your own work in such cases.
Stupid comments by the lawmaker, it goes without saying.
I just wanted to throw my lot in with number 23. My name is always misspelled, mispronounced, and chopped up, and on just about everything from school webpages to Home Plus cards, so this isn’t a uniquely American problem. The name on my health insurance card? Brian. Just Brian.
It’s nice to know that I can spend the whole day playing video games and drinking beer, and I’ll still be ahead of Texas.
Walking through San Francisco’s Chinatown, a tourist from the Midwest was enjoying the artistry of all the Chinese restaurants, shops, signs and banners when he turned a corner and saw a building with the sign “Moshe Plotnik’s Laundry.” “Moshe Plotnik?” he wondered. “How does that belong in Chinatown?”
He walked into the shop and saw a fairly standard looking dry cleaner, although he could see that the proprietors were clearly aware of the uniqueness of the store name as there were baseball hats, T-shirts and coffee mugs emblazoned with the logo “Moshe Plotnik’s Chinese Laundry.”
The tourist selected a coffee cup as a conversation piece to take back to his office. Behind the counter was a smiling old Chinese gentleman who thanked him for his purchase. The tourist asked, “Can you explain how this place got a name like ‘Moshe Plotnik’s Laundry?’
The old man answered, “Ah…Evleebody ask me that . It name of owner.”
Looking around, the tourist asked, “Is he here?”
“It me,” replies the old man.
“Really? You’re Chinese. How did you ever get a name like Moshe Plotnik?”
“Is simple”, said the old man. “Many, many year ago I come to this country. I standing in line at ‘Documentation Center of Immigration.’ Man in front of me was Jewish man from Poland. Lady at counter look at him and say, “What your name?” He say, “Moshe Plotnik.”
Then she look at me and say, “What’s your name?”
I say, “Sam Ting.”
This reminded me of a case recently in Safe Francisco where a Chinese-American city supervisor had the the name of Ed Jew. I did a double take when the headline read something to the effect of Ed Jew Steals Money, I thought it said something else for a moment and did a double take. I’m ticked off I can’t find the headline now but here’s a story about him:
http://www.sfexaminer.com/local/Ed-Jew-sentenced-42422372.html
Imagine if his name was Adam, or Abraham, it’d might read A. Jew Steals Money. Oh wait that was Bernie Madoff. Relax PC brigade it’s a joke, relax.
In ‘The Godfather’ didn’t something similar happen to Vito Andolini from the Sicilian village of Corleone when he passed through Ellis Island as a child?
Here’s another stupid legislator trick from the American Southwest. A certain city councilwoman started a campaign to require that all signage be in English, rather than Spanish, Korean, Vietnamese, etc. Until it was pointed out to her that the name of both the city and the state would also be implicated. Oops.
“You can imagine what kind of reactions that got.”
Actually, I can’t Eugene is a pretty common name in the east and not just whose original name was Yujin or similar.
#21 Colontos – did you not read Marmot’s links as to that likely being an urban myth.
Brian @ 28,
At least the British are kind enough to make a movie about your life.
I changed my name to an appropriate “anglo friendly” name.
Actually, a lot of the Korean last names are already Americanized. Kim? Really pronounced G-hymn. Park? Bak. Lee? Yi.
To be exact, Lee ought to be the single letter E. But I guess that’s not such a good idea, considering all the crazy trouble suffered by Mr.O in that nytimes article.
Hey, I’m all for Korean last names and Western first names like Bob Kim.
But we should ban Robert Kim just like the English royalty ban the name John…
#22 Speeding Biblical prophecies are we? Bound to happen one day eh.
I can’t let this pass without saying ole! for people called “유진”, which in the past has been romanized as “eujin”, but I’m now beginning to think should be re-hangeulized as “으진”.
People keep asking me what the hanja for my name is. I’m currently going with “瑜塵”, but only because it has a lot of strokes. It means something like “jade dust”, or so I’ve been led to believe. Can one wear hanbok ironically?
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