Voices on the New Diasporas - an MIT student journal
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How I Found My Name
by Nina Mann
I remember a day when four letters arrived in our mailbox. Four letters addressed to four different names; four letters ultimately destined for the same person.
One letter from a charity, soliciting donations from Mrs. Huiling Lu.
One letter from Nayatt Elementary School, reminding Mrs. Huiling Ni about her parent-teacher conference on Wednesday morning.
One letter from Barrington High School, cordially inviting Mrs. Huiling Mann to her daughter’s graduation.
And one letter from Citizens Bank, informing Mrs. Huiling Xu of her May credit card balance.
Lu is my family name; or at least, it is my father’s last name, and it would be my family name if everybody in my family shared a common surname. But the fact of the matter is… we don’t have the same last name, none of us do. I guess that’s how history has worked itself out. For all intents and purposes, I’m a Mann, my brother is a Ni, my dad is a Lu, and my mom—well, she’s really a Xu, because it is Chinese culture for the wife to keep her maiden name. But to my acquaintances, my mom is Mrs. Mann, and to my brother’s, she’s Mrs. Ni, and to everyone else not accustomed to Chinese culture, she’s Mrs. Lu. It can be discomfiting at times—not having a family name to identify with. Nobody can tell by my name that I’m my father’s daughter or my brother’s sister. I’m simply… Nina Mann. Whatever that means.
I sometimes wonder what would have happened if this history—our history—had meandered slightly astray from its chosen path.
For instance, what if my grandmother, my father’s mother, had had a brother? Then my dad would have been named Yun Yun Ni. My grandmother is a Lu; my grandfather a Ni. Tradition dictates that their children all be Ni’s, but there is something even more powerful in Chinese culture than the mandates of tradition. There is family. There is bringing pride and honor to the family, upholding the family name, and passing on the family name from one generation to the next. The Lu family line would have ended with my grandmother, for she had no brothers. And so this responsibility fell upon my father, the third of four children, the second son. He was not destined to be a Ni, as his father was; no, he was destined to be a Lu, and thus the Lu’s continued to thrive for another generation.
What if my parents hadn’t been dutiful children? What if they had refused the name my grandfather wanted for their daughter? Then I would have been Lu Man, or Man Lu, as we would write in English. But in China, we are taught to respect and obey our elders, and my grandfather had wanted me to share his surname. He dubbed me Ni Man, or Man Ni, and from the moment I was born, my father, mother, and I all had different surnames; there was a Lu, a Xu, and a Ni. But there was no Mann, not yet.
What if the English language hadn’t evolved such that the Merriam-Webster definition for “man” is “male human”? What if society hadn’t been so persistent in telling little kids that they had to fit in? What if there had been a Disney movie about an Asian princess? What if there was no such thing as “white superiority”?
Then perhaps, just perhaps, I would be Man Ni still.
I left China at the age of three; I left the country, and I left my native culture. The Chinese people always tell stories about how wonderful America is. Nobody is hungry; everybody lives in huge houses; everybody owns a car. The 1980s was a decade when children studied hard so that maybe, they could come to America, when adults worked hard so that maybe, their children could come to America. I, like many others, came to believe that America is better—better than China. Better than China could ever be. And when that airplane landed in the O’Hare International Airport in 1989, America did not disappoint. The gleaming Chicago skyscrapers towered over a sparkling blue Lake Michigan. We drove to my father’s apartment in a car; and even though we lived in a studio for that first year—even though my parents slept in a giant walk-in closet—everything was better than what we had in China. Only one thing tainted my starry-eyed view of America: my name, Man, meant “male human” in English; and for that, I was embarrassed. So my parents tacked on an extra “n” at the end. I turned into Mann Ni, no longer “male human.”
My parents changed the spelling of my first name, but they could not change its pronunciation, nor its obvious Oriental flair. My name was different—not the type of different that intrigued others and sparked curiosity and awe, but the type of different that people smirked at, that people laughed at. Eight-year old boys taunted, eight-year-old girls mocked, and my eight-year-old self cried. I cried at the silence that always preceded my name in roll call, as if the teachers couldn’t believe that a child would actually be named Mann. Perhaps it was really pronounced Mahn, or Amanda, as one group of counselors at a summer camp insisted on calling me. I cried at the envy I felt towards my American friends—the ones who were named Kate and Paola and Lindsay, the ones with names that could be found on the key chain or postcard souvenirs at specialty stores.
And I cried the most when I realized that I didn’t look like Cinderella, or Belle, or Sleeping Beauty. I wanted to be a princess, but how could I, with my hair so black and eyes so brown and skin so yellow? I remember the two Barbies I owned, and the American Girl dolls I longed for, Samantha and Kirsten and Molly. I didn’t look like them either; I didn’t look like the ideal American. But how could I look American with such an Oriental name as Mann Ni? Everything about myself marked me as different, inferior, almost, because we all know that China is not as good as America, that yellow skin is not as good as white skin. I embraced America, because I had grown up with the notion that America is the best; but America did not seem to want me as much as I wanted her. And at the end, I cried over my black hair and brown eyes; I cried at the world of difference between my friends and me; and I cried at the eccentricities of my name. I longed for blonde hair and blue eyes and a name like Emily, because blonde-haired, blue-eyed girls named Emily could be princesses. I knew I couldn’t change my physical features. And so I changed my name. At this point, I knew that it wasn’t unusual for Asians to adopt Western names, which were easy to remember, which avoided the awkward pauses and silences of American friends trying to pronounce the likes of Mann Ni, and which, most of all, made their owners a little bit more white and a little less Asian. Little kids want to have what their friends have; they want to do what their friends do. Uniqueness is not considered a virtue to kindergarteners; fitting in is. If I had to look different—if my hair had to be stubbornly black and my eyes stubbornly brown and stubbornly slanted-upwards—well, at least I could adopt a perfectly un-different Anglo-Saxon name.
So that’s what I did. I adopted a “Western” name. But unfortunately, I messed up a little in the process. I didn’t realize that adopting a Western name meant taking a new nickname and keeping the same last name. Indeed, I had another sort of epiphany. When I was in the third grade, my family moved from one suburb of Chicago to another, and I decided that it would be the perfect opportunity for me to end the embarrassment my name had caused me throughout elementary school. I would adopt an American name; I would start anew. Nina Mann. It’s almost like my Chinese name, Man Ni; in fact, it only has three extra letters! My parents, wanting only to make me happy, acquiesced. None of us recognized what it meant for me to change my last name. None of us foresaw the difficulties that would arise almost a decade later, as I started high school and accumulated permanent records under my Nina Mann persona. I realize now that I wasn’t merely taking on a nickname; I was changing my entire identity. I became a Mann. I became… American.
My transformation was complete, or at least as complete as it could be. I had changed everything about myself that I could possibly change. I had changed my behavior—I spoke English and ate American cafeteria food and dressed in blue jeans and tee shirts and celebrated Thanksgiving and the Fourth of July; I even changed my name. Names can say a lot about a person’s race and background; we can form stereotypes and biases before we even meet someone just by knowing a name. Well, I enjoyed taking that privilege away from strangers. I admit it was refreshing to not be labeled immediately as Chinese just by the combination of letters that made up my name. I could hide under the premise of Nina Mann, pretending to be that white, blonde-haired, blue-eyed girl I had always wanted to be, pretending until my physical characteristics finally betrayed me (and even though the name Nina conjures up images of brown-haired, Hispanic girls in my mind, it is okay, so long as the images are not distinctly Asian). But to my dismay, no matter what I did to try to be white, I could never pull out my Chinese roots. I always remained different, somehow, from everyone else in the small, white suburbia I grew up in. I was American in almost every aspect—I spoke English and ate pizza and hung out at the bagel shop and drove around town in my car and even had an American name to boot—but at the end of the day, it was the Asian/Pacific Islander box that I checked off on the standardized tests, not the Caucasian one.
And the more I did speak English and eat pizza and hang out at the bagel shop and drive around town and hide behind my American name, the more I felt disconnected with myself. What was I doing, trying to be Nina Mann, trying to be someone that I simply wasn’t? I felt like a traitor to my grandfather, to my family, to my race. When my little brother was born, my grandfather had already passed away, but my parents gave Teddy the surname Ni in honor of my grandfather’s dying wish. My parents tell me I was my grandfather’s favorite grandchild. I wish they wouldn’t. It hurt when other kids taunted me for my name, but it hurts even more when I think of what I have done; I took his gift to me and I threw it away. I should be a Ni. But I don’t know how to. Is it too late already? What do I do? How do I begin?
In adopting a new name, in assimilating to western culture, I have split myself in half, and the two halves do not really make a whole. Nina Mann is American; she has traded the old world for the new world, the dumplings for the hamburgers, the Chinese for the English. She was the one who had wanted to fit in as a child, and thus she was the one who begged her parents to celebrate Christmas and Easter and Thanksgiving. But everybody in America knows—they know that Nina Mann is not quite authentically American. She looks different form the rest of them, with her jet black hair and yellow-tinged skin; she looks foreign. She’s got some China in her. Man Ni is Chinese; she has clung to the old world, trying to resist the invasion of the new. She makes dumplings with her parents and speaks in broken Chinese to her grandparents and celebrates the Chinese New Year. But everybody in China knows—they know that Man Ni is not quite authentically Chinese. She walks differently and dresses differently and talks differently; she acts foreign. She’s got some America in her. And together, Nina Mann and Man Ni, what are they? America and China. American-Chinese. Chinese-American. Me.
And in the end, my grandmother, my father’s mother, did not have a brother. And so my father became Yun Yun Lu. My parents were dutiful children; they let my grandfather choose my name. And so I was born Man Ni. English evolved as it did, and the Merriam-Webster dictionary defines “man” as it always has, as it always will, a “male human.” And so I learned to hate my name as a child. Little children long to fit in, as they always have, as they always will. And so I changed my name. And Disney princesses—the beautiful blonde-haired girls with pasty white skin. They’ve changed over the years. Some are yellow now, some will be black tomorrow. Maybe Man Ni can be a princess after all.
© 2007 MIT E-merging Journal
