God creates the world. He asks Adam to name the living creatures, since all kine and fowl of the air and beasts of the field should be endowed with their true names. – Genesis
1973
Birmingham, Alabama. Minnan “Charles” Cheng and Li-
Yun “Lily” Chiang ponder American names. Recent
arrivals from Taiwan, they understand that American
names will help their children assimilate and succeed in
the United States.1
“Well?” Li-Yun asks Minnan after five-year-old Shun-
Che and four-year-old Wen-Yin have been put to bed.
They consider the possibilities. The American names
they know are limited to A) the 1950s phrasebooks from
which they learned English;2 B) outdated Hollywood
movies that used to play in their village, and C) the Bible.
For the boy: “Michael? Joseph? Eugene?” For the girl:
“Grace? Esther? Betty?”
Minnan likes the sound of “Joseph.” Through word
association—and remembering a red-cheeked teacher at
her missionary-run high school—Li-Yun proposes
“Mary” for the girl. 3 Joseph and Mary. Somehow, these
names seem to belong together.
Before the siblings can be named after Jesus Christ’s
parents—a pairing that brings with it a whiff of incest,
despite the technicality of immaculate conception—
Minnan is visited by a memory: a Technicolor romp he
saw one afternoon in the backwater Taiwanese cinema, in
which a girl next door enchants a suave bachelor.
“What about Doris?” he says. It’s a name that glows with
the American brightness of Doris Day’s golden bob.
It’s settled. Shun-Che is “Joseph,” and Wen-Yin is
“Doris.” 4
1974
“Doris” starts kindergarten in Nashville, Tennessee,
where Minnan’s job has brought the family. Aside from
her brother, she is the only Asian in school and other
children stare as if she is a zoo animal. It is not clear
whether her American name is helping her to assimilate.
1975
Minnan and Li-Yun shop for a baby gift. They received a
birth announcement from Minnan’s boss announcing the
arrival of “Stephanie,” but they are stymied by the name,
so similar to “Stephen” but ambiguously long, with that
extra i and e at the rear. They can’t figure out if the baby
is a boy or a girl. They end up buying a blue bib and
booties.
1976
Kids approach “Doris” on the playground and ask, “How
do you say Bubba in Chinese? How do you say Tammy?
How do you say Mikey?” She has no idea how to answer
these questions. When they shout, “What’s your real
name? Charlie Chan! Hong Kong Phooey! Kung fu ching
chong chop suey!” she hears a swarm of insects in her head.
1979
The family moves to New Jersey. “Doris” is again the
only Asian in her class. When the teacher hears her name,
she exclaims, “I have a great-aunt named Doris!” and the
other fourth graders snigger. The sound of “Doris” is a
naked yellow light that exposes her sharp-cut eyes and
black bangs. It seems clear that her American name is not
helping her to assimilate. 5
1980
Bullies at school refer to “Doris” as “Dorkus” because
she is quiet and academically inclined. Adults think her
name is “Dorothy” or say, “My grandmother was named
Doris, she was such a sweet lady.” Even her friends call
her “Delores” by accident, or spell her name “Dorris” or
“Doras.” No one her age has heard of Doris Day.6
1981
After an encounter with an uncomprehending bank teller,
Li-Yun curses “Lily,” the name given to her by a long ago
ESL teacher with no regard for the limitations of her
Chinese-speaking tongue. Li-Yun’s attempts to
pronounce her American name frequently result in
confusion:
“My name is Lily.” She pronounces the short i as if it
was a long e, and her l carries a d’s heavy tongue click.
“Dee Dee?”
“No, LEE-LEE!”
“Gigi?”
She tells her daughter she hates her American name; she
wishes she had been named “Sue.”
“Doris” says nothing. She wants to say that she too hates
her American name, but she knows her pinched,
overworked mother does not want to hear it.7
1982
Adolescent “Doris” is hunch-shouldered and socially
undesirable. She wonders if her American name has
determined her American destiny: Has her identity
grown to fit the shape of the vessel that contains it? The
Doris vessel is spinsterish and smells faintly of
mothballs. She senses that her life would be different—
better—if her parents had been astute enough to name
her “Jennie” (there are five in her grade) or “Stacey”
(there are two). These vessels are sparkly, pink, and well-liked.8
1984
In high school “Doris” begins to stand up straight, wear
make-up, and talk back to her parents. She has become a
believer in free will, not determinism. She is loath to
think that her name has defined her identity; she prefers
to believe that she is, at core, an attractive, smart, cool
individual in spite of her name. “Doris” has served her
poorly, she thinks. She vows to legally change her name
when she turns 18.
1987
When “Doris” was ten, she watched an ABC Afterschool
Special about a girl named “Francesca” with an alcoholic
mother. Back then “Francesca” had seemed the most
beautiful name in the world. But now? “Doris” knows it
is not for her: too florid, it is more suited to a girl with a
large bosom.
What then? Jennie? Stacy? Melissa? Chrissy? To assume
the name of a sparkly girl feels like committing an act of
fraud. But to take a duller name, like Alice, Elizabeth,
Pamela—what would be the point?
1988
“Doris” enrolls in college, takes a few Women’s Studies
and literature classes, has her consciousness raised. For
the first time, she sees the underlying hegemony of white
culture. She decides she will no longer accommodate it.
No longer will she use the name “Doris.” She will revert
to her Chinese birth name—“Wen-Yin”—even though no
one, not even her family, uses it. They all call her
“Doris,” even her grandmother, who says it in the
Japanese manner: “Dori-su.”9
She tells her dorm mates, “Don’t call me ‘Doris’.”
“What?”
“I’m thinking of going back to my Chinese name—
‘Wen-Yin.’ Trying it out.”
“One Nin?”
“No. Wen-Yin.”
“Ha, okay.”10
“Doris / Wen-Yin” is hopeful that the transition to her
Chinese name will go smoothly, until she enters the dorm
lounge and a boy shouts “WEN!” He points to her and
proceeds to belt “Singular sensation, every little step she
takes, da da, da da, da da…WEN!” She realizes he is
singing the showstopper from the musical A Chorus Line.
She knows she ought not tolerate this kind of disrespect
for her culture. But everyone in the room is laughing and
she feels her skin prickle, as if a swarm of insects is
crawling up her neck and onto her face. She runs out of
the room.
1990
“Say it with the accent,” her friends tell her, giggling.
“Say ‘Wen-Yin’ like you’d say it in Chinese.”11 She
does. They make a show of mimicking her Chinese
pronunciation, adopting a singsong voice and
exaggerating the tone of “Yin” until it reaches a
squeakily high pitch. They are not trying to be cruel; they
believe they are sharing a joke with her. She forces
herself to laugh.
1992
“Wen-Yin” does not work. After years of disuse, it is as
thin as a turtle hatchling’s carapace. It is the name of
someone just off the boat, as unfamiliar as an ancestor, as
distant as her lost child-self. But “Doris” has always felt
like something borrowed—when she hears someone say
her name, it takes her a moment to realize they are
talking to her. The sound of it chafes against her skin, as
if she is wearing someone else’s slack and ill-fitting
dress. Still, she keeps it for now. There are no other
options.12
1996
When people ask “Doris” her name, she is never sure
how to say it. Is it “DOR-ris” or is it “DAH-ris”? When
she says “DOR-ris,” people ask her to repeat herself.
When she says “DAH-ris,” she sounds like an antebellum
character. Any way she says it, she can’t help but hear
the quotation marks that frame it, lifting it uncertainly
like two shrugging shoulders.13
“Doris” remembers the biblical story of Adam. By giving
all the living creatures their true name, he captured their
essence—he allowed them to be seen. She has no true
name. Does anyone see her, truly?
1997
“Doris” is a mask behind which she lives. It is
provisional; there is no name that captures her essence.
But she begins to notice how nimble she feels in her
namelessness—how keen, how free.
Names are fetters, she thinks. Once you are named, that
articulation of letters and sounds binds you in place like
an incantation. You become a thing that is signified, a
cog in a system of meaning you did not create. Once you
are named, you are no longer free to define yourself.14
1998
“Doris” meets and falls in love with her future husband.
His name reflects who he is: Ben is steady, even and
deep. His family has lived in America for two
generations, and he carries his name as easily as he
carries his own hands.
He listens when she speaks. He remembers things she
tells him. He sees her, truly.
They move in together, and as they are unpacking, he
calls her over, wanting to know what she thinks of the
artwork he’s hung. It is an abstract print, formless and
suggestive.
“Doris—should it go higher or lower?”
She makes a face. She tells him to not call her “Doris.”
“Why?” he asks.
“It sounds weird. Impersonal.”
“Well. What am I supposed to call you?”
“Something else.” She thinks for a moment. “How about
Sweetheart? That sounds right.”
END
1 Minnan and Li-Yun were part of the
immigrant wave from Taiwan that
followed the Immigration and
Naturalization Act of 1965. This cohort
is described by Iris Chang in The
Chinese in America as “consisting
almost exclusively of the brightest and
most ambitious.” As a boy Minnan
learned the importance of
accommodating the dominant culture.
During the Japanese occupation of
Taiwan, his father served as mayor of
their village of Taya, wore Western-style
suits or kimonos, and gave his children
both Japanese and Chinese names.
Minnan enrolled in the Japanese-run
school as “Toshi”; he subsequently rose
to the top of his class and, later, earned a
graduate fellowship to study in the
United States.
2 The fact that ESL materials were out of
date by about ten years resulted in
Taiwanese arriving on US shores
exclaiming such things as “Jeepers!” and
“Hotcha!”
3 Of the Christian missionaries who
arrived in Taiwan during the 19th
Century, the Presbyterians were
especially effective because they
mastered the local Hokkien dialect like
serpent-tongued champs. They invented a Church script called Peh-oe-ji (POJ, or
Church Romanization) that allowed
them to transcribe the language
phonetically, translate Bible stories, and
spread their religion. While one might
question their agenda, the Presbyterian
mission did create a system that helps to
preserve Taiwanese language and
culture today, especially important as
Mandarin has become the dominant
language in Taiwan.
4 Contrast the haphazardness of this
naming with Wen-Yin’s naming at birth.
Back then, her paternal grandfather
spent days consulting tomes of Chinese
nomenclature, considering the balance of
earth, fire, metal, and water, to
select the truest, most auspicious name
for his first-born granddaughter. (Even
more effort went into choosing her
brother’s name, since, as his
generation’s first-born male, his name
would include the generational character
that future male cousins would carry.)
He certainly didn’t grab the first random
name that floated into his mind. One has
to ask, what were Minnan and Li-Yun
thinking?
5 It’s time we discuss more generally the
American names that post-1965 East Asian
immigrants seemed to favor. I’m talking
about mid-century all-American names
like Nancy, Dennis, Betty, Carl, Connie,
drawn from the outdated ESL
phrasebooks previously mentioned
(and outdated movies of the kind shown in Taiwan). Colonial pipe-smoking names
like Winston, Wilson, and Jefferson.
Biblical names like Grace and Samuel,
with the old-lady stylings of Agnes,
Esther, Ethel, Beatrice (the missionaries
at it again). The euphonically
complementary Eugene and Eunice,
favored by Koreans because they sound
similar to Korean names (and “eu” has
positive connotations in Korean). The
strange slash nerdy names for boys—
names that I really can’t explain: e.g.,
Kelvin, Melvin, Roland, Conway.
The end result: A cohort of firstgeneration
Asian Americans cursed by
their parents’ desire to assimilate while utterly unable to grasp the nuances of the
English language. Among this
generation of Asian Americans, “Doris”
was an uncommon choice; it was better
than “Agnes” but still, far, far worse
than “Nancy.”
Filipino names are a completely separate
discussion. Suffice to say that Spanish
colonization and the restriction of
possible surnames has led to some wild
choices, like “Cherry Pie,” “Girlie,”
“BumBum,” and “Honey Boy.”
6 A post on BehindTheName.com has
this to say about “Doris”: “Don’t even
think about giving this wretched old lady
name to a poor innocent baby! Even a
pet deserves a better name than this.”
Another commenter notes that in 2015,
only 85 baby girls were given the name
“Doris” in the ENTIRE United States.
(Compare that to 20,355 babies named
“Emma” in the same year, as per the
Social Security Administration.)
According to goodtoknow.co.uk, in
2016, “Doris” was number 7 on the list
of most unpopular girls’ names in the
UK.
7 Focused on work and survival, Minnan
and Li-Yun were uninterested in the
customs of their adopted country.
Minnan wore plaid polyester suits well
into the 1980s. Li-Yun bought expired
food on the cheap and forbade her
children from offering snacks to friends.
Nothing was ever thrown away or
wasted. Like the hand-me-down boy
clothes “Doris” received from her
brother, or the old chair leg her father
used to stake a tree in the front yard, the
name “Doris” was perfectly serviceable
and therefore good enough. To want
more was an unaffordable luxury.
“Lily’s” hatred of her American name
notwithstanding, these folks were
preoccupied and not inclined to
understand the curse they put on their
daughter by naming her “Doris.”
8 It begs the question: What shape would
Wen-Yin’s identity have taken had she
been named “Mary”? Placid and
obedient? Virginal? One wonders.
9 When English words are incorporated
into the Japanese language, they take on
a specifically Japanese pronunciation.
This means that loanwords are
frequently given an extra vowel sound at
the end, e.g., “sandal-u” for sandals, “ju-su” for juice, or “kashu nattsu” for
cashew nuts. The Taiwanese tend to
adopt the “Nipponized” version of these
words.
10 Where a previous generation of Asian
immigrants attempted to assimilate by
adopting names in the dominant culture,
newer, more politically assertive
generations have chosen to keep their
birth names. (In his New York Times op-ed “America, Say My Name,” Viet
Thanh Nguyen writes, “That, in the end,
was the choice I made. Not to change.
Not to translate. Not, in this one
instance, to adapt to America.”) This has
led to mass confusion among white
people. It was already hard enough for
them to tell Asians apart. Now they were
expected to pronounce these chop-syllabled names? And not just
pronounce them—remember them?
The fact is, Asian names have never
NOT been funny to white people.
Witness Long Duk Dong of Sixteen
Candles fame. And who could forget the
2013 crash landing of Asiana Flight 214
in San Francisco? The news anchor on
station KTVU straight-facedly reported
the name of the pilot as “Captain Sum
Ting Wong” and listed the “names” of
the other pilots as “Wi Tu Low, Ho Lee
Fuk, Bang Ding Ow.” These were the
names on his teleprompter, and they also
appeared on a screen graphic. It turned
out the fake names were supplied by a
summer intern, who, according to the
station, “acted outside the scope of his
authority.” Today, if you search for the
KTVU news clip on YouTube, you’ll
find the video described as “Hilarious!”
and “BEST TROLL EVER.” Before you
start chuckling, keep in mind that three
people died in the crash.
11 In Pinyin, the Romanization system
for Mandarin, “Wen” is pronounced
with the second (rising) tone and “Yin”
with the first (high-level) tone. The
surname of “Cheng” is pronounced with
the fourth (falling) tone. Altogether it
would be “Chèng Wén-Yīn.”
12 Naming has been a big deal since
Genesis. Ancient peoples closely
guarded their secret names and spoke
them only during sacred rituals. In the
Kabbalah, every object has a linguistic
equivalent—a name—that expresses its
true nature, including God. Jewish
families who had lost children would
wait to give subsequent children a name,
so that the Angel of Death would not be
able to find them. (Which begs the
question: Why give your child a name at
all if it just means they’ll get picked off
by the Angel of Death? And by not
giving your child a name—are you then
making them immortal?)
13 Ironic, isn’t it, that “Doris,” a name
chosen with so little thought (see Note
4), became in the end her primary name,
the one used every day? And “Wen-
Yin,” the name selected with so much
care and deliberation, became an
afterthought, an unloved pet trotted out
on visits to Taiwan or plopped onto the
bottom of tax forms?
Then again, irony may not be the right
word. Perhaps Minnan and Li-Yun
simply never thought “Doris” would
become their daughter’s real name. In
1973, sitting on the floor of their cheap
rented apartment and pondering
American names for their children, how
could they know the ways that they and
their offspring would be changed by
their overseas sojourn?
Maybe Minnan and Li-Yun couldn’t
imagine a future in which their
Taiwanese culture dimmed in
importance—colliding, negotiating, and
incorporating with American culture.
Maybe they couldn’t imagine a future in
which their children lost the ability to
speak their mother tongue, forgot to
honor their ancestors, and rejected their
authority. Maybe they couldn’t imagine
“Doris” ever replacing “Wen-Yin”—or
everything they would gain and lose
when their children grew up to become
Taiwanese Americans.
14 Names are less important in some
corners of the world. The Machiguenga
people of the Amazon “did not even
have personal names until recently”
(Henrich, Foundations of Human
Sociality). On the Reddit anthropology
forum, one user notes that the Hadza of
Tanzania “have very fluid naming
conventions and might, one day, decide
to have a different name.” The Hadza
are hunters and foragers, living much as
they have done for thousands of years. I
wonder if they understand the freedom
that comes with being nameless.
Doris W. Cheng is an immigrant Taiwanese American fiction writer who writes frequently about family, race, and identity. She received an MA in English and Comparative Literature from Columbia University and teaches fiction and poetry in New York and New Jersey. Her stories have appeared in Witness, Berkeley Fiction Review, The Normal School, The Cincinnati Review miCRo, The Pinch, New Delta Review, and other literary publications. She is the recipient of a 2020 Barbara Deming Memorial Fund Grant for feminist-centered fiction.
