When Dragon Met Jasmine: Domesticating English Names in Chinese Social Interaction

Abstract

The acquisition and use of English names in China is
usually treated by scholars as evidence of growing Westerniza
tion by Chinese speakers, who are forced to acquire these names
to successfully converse with foreigners. In this article, I draw
on an ethnographic examination of Chinese English names and
naming narratives to reveal the indexical connections between
names and meanings. Rather than acting as simple indices of
Western identities, English names are dynamic signifiers in a
complex social field of interactions that are distinctly Chinese.
The characteristics of desirable English names borrow from a
cultural pragmatics of Chinese naming instead of foreign norms.