“My Name”-Final draft
My full name is Thien Hac Huan (family- middle- given). Like many other Vietnamese boys, I inherit my family name from my father’s side of the family. What make my case a little special is that I have my mother’s given as my middle name. This idea was originally my grandmother’s who also the one gave me my identity, my first name. I later learned that she naming me such a way to remind who my father and mother are and to remember of them always.
There was a time in my childhood when I hated my name, Huan. It might be due to the fact that the name originated from some old-fashion words that it became unknown and rarely used. Or the reason could be how easily people usual mispronounce it as Quan, a completely different name, as the vowel “h” is very similar with “q” in Vietnamese. This sometimes annoyed me a lot. One vivid experience that added fire to my negative feeling occurred during second grade. Throughout that grade I was given by a friend a nick name that, in Vietnamese, is literally means “pants” as it was completely rhymed with my given name. It was started by one kid as a silly joke but then it became official to the whole class as my new alias. It became much worse when they added my middle name which means “black” into their jokes. In the perspective of a six-year-old child, I was both irritated and humiliated.
Esperanza Cordero, Sandra Cisneros’s main character in her famous novel, once displayed the similar feeling toward her own name. “At school they say my name funny as if the syllables were made out of tin and hurt the roof of your mouth”, Cisneros noted on how her character’s name could be made fun of by her friends. While Esperanza was not quite fond of her name as it was too long, too complex, I found my name was boring and plain. However, one feeling we share was how easily they were to become a source for someone joke.
My inability to stop and correct my friends’ joke just made me more obnoxious and fed up...