Steve,

since you were born in Europe I assume your given name originally was not "Steve" but rather Stephan or so. Now, did you "anglise" your name when your family moved to Canada? Do you think it is something that people should do, let's say a John or Peter permanently moving to France, maybe as a child and becoming Pierre and Jean?

I noticed that Americans tend to address foreigners by their English name if the English version is available. I had a French colleague in our company, called Thierry and the Americans would all address him as "Terry".

I did not anglicize my name, my parents did. I was 5 at the time. I was Staffan in Sweden, but even there we were immigrants.

I think that the matter of names is entirely up to the individual. Here, people are used to all kinds of names, and tend to find short forms to use. We have a Navdeep in our office, and he is Nav, although our Fumiko is Fumiko, Boris and Igor are just Boris and Igor. We had a Taiwanese employee before who had an English name "Chris" but he preferred to be called Sute (Sootay) and that is what we called him. Massimo becomes Mass, Kazuhiro, becomes Kaz and so one. You would probably end up as Fred.

It really does not matter much. I preferred to be Steve, but there are Roberto's (Roberto Luongo, goaltender for the local hockey team) who prefers Roberto rather than Bob.

The only time it maters is on a job application. I think John Zhang or John Polowski are more likely to get an interview than Zhang Xing Qun or Zbigniew Polowski. The reason is because of language. There are many immigrants with poor English and I think the English names suggests a closer connection to local culture. Once you have the job you can say that you prefer to be called something else.

I had the weird situation once with one of our contact people at a car company in the US who was an American from Italian decent. He had an Italian family name and his first name was John. At some point in time he suddenly changed it to Giovanni, changed it in his email address, announced it to all colleagues and suppliers, maybe changed it even in his passport.

In cases where people change their given name like you did, do they also change it in their passport?

So regardless what people called you in Sweden, your "official" given name that showed up in your birth certificate was that the Czech version of Steven?

Zbigniew Brzinski was President Carter's security advisor, seems his name didn't prevent him from being interviewed.

@Friedemann

Something quite interesting that I noticed when I was living in Germany was this: there were some Germans (especially of the younger generations) who seemed to consider it very "cool" to adopt an anglicized short-form of their name, i.e. "Mike", "Jon", "Bob", etc...

I never had any problem with this - if anything it made it easier for me to remember names.

But I couldn't help having a little chuckle at the thought of folks in English-speaking countries doing likewise. For example, if someone in the UK or US called "John" started calling himself "Hans"...well...I think it might seem pretty hilarious to most of his friends! :-D

My name in Russian is Евгений, which, as it is mentioned in Wikipedia, can be transliterated into English in really many ways (Evgeni, Evgeniy, Evgeny [this one stands in my passport], Eugeny, Eugeniy, Ievgeny, Yevgeny, Yevgeni, Yevgeniy) [probably not a complete list, as far as my hewing here on LingQ calls himself Eugueny ;)] and there are as many if you transliterate it into other languages.

But transliterating a name, that has a native form in other languages doesn't sound right to me. So, I always ask to call me Eugene in English and Eugen in German (Eugène is coming back, as I am starting with French once again :)

Luckily enough, names of Ancient Greek origin often have native variants in almost every European language =)

However, I agree that it's just a person's right to decide on how he likes himself to be called.

I like to be called Ángela in Spanish. It just seems to fit better with the language, and keeps me in the mode of speaking / thinking in Spanish. When I start speaking French, I plan to introduce myself as Angelique or Angèle. :-)

I have heard some Americans butcher foreign names, and names that aren't even difficult to pronounce, so if I were foreign, I would possibly give others an Anglo version of my name for that reason.

Steve, regarding a job application, I have a last name that is stereotypically "black", anyone in the U.S. could take 3 guesses at the name and guess correctly. I have been advised to use my maiden name on my resume and job application (which I don't do). I'm sorry if this is slightly off topic.

Edited to add: I have heard that some immigrants coming to the U.S. in the past (early 1900s) changed their last names for many reasons.

@Jay,

Germans adopting English names? Never noticed that. Speaking of "Hans", wasn't that the name of the terrorist leader in Die Hard 1? ...and we know how that ended...

@ aybee,

Yes, some Americans really tend to butcher foreign names, I have been on the receiving end of that quite some time.

@Friedemann: "...Speaking of "Hans", wasn't that the name of the terrorist leader in Die Hard 1..."
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You're right. However I believe his gang in the film were supposed to be a splinter-group from the RAF, right? So I guess "Hans" wasn't so very outlandish as a name in this context.

All I can remember about him is that he was played by a British actor, had a beard, and (to the disgust of Bruce Willis) smoked European cigarettes! ;-)

I'm with @aybee -- when I go abroad I prefer to use the local version of my name. For example, my Russian students called me Sharlotta when I was teaching in Moscow. It tends to cut down on confusion and name butchering, and make things a little more pleasant for everyone. Fortunately, "Charlotte" has cognates in many other languages. I don't know what I'd do if I was named Crystal or Raeleen or something very obviously American.

As an aside, does anyone notice themselves acting differently while abroad and being addressed as the local version of your name? Sharlotta the Muscovite is a bit of a different person than Charlotte the New Yorker or Charlotte the Parisian or Lotte the Berliner. Perhaps that slight personality change is natural when one is thinking and speaking in a different language?

Friedemann,

Why do make assumptions? My birth certificate had the Swedish form of my name. My Canadian passport had the English form of my name.

Zbigniew Brezezinski did not send in an application form to people he did not know. He was a well known academic, and that is why he got the job.

Angela,

I don't think people should hide their ethnicity by changing their last name. It is just that having a local first name implies a greater familiarity with the local language, possibly culture, and this might possibly work in your favour on a job application. It may not matter, but in terms of getting in the door for an interview, I would certainly recommend it, especially for groups like the Chinese where we have a lot of recent immigrants with poor English.

"You're right. However I believe his gang in the film were supposed to be a splinter-group from the RAF, right? So I guess "Hans" wasn't so very outlandish as a name in this context."

They were portrayed as mercenaries from Eastern Germany, I think.

I only wanted to say that Hans is a name that perhaps not many Americans would like to be called, and in fact it is not a popular name at all in Germany. For me, the first thing the name evoked was Die Hard, funny. By the way, when Hans meets Bruce Willis on the roof and pretends to be another hostage he changes to a convincing American accent. I never found that credible in the movie, I don't believe many Germans could pull that off and pass for an American, at least not when Bruce Willis is pointing a gun at them...

Steve,

regarding Mr. Breszinski you're of course right and my comment was more tongue in cheek and not really meant as a challenge to your valid point above.

Heck, I changed my picture for Canada's National Day. It's been long enough, but then the Olympics is coming up....

Steve=Štěpán in Czech I think

@Friedemann: "...when Hans meets Bruce Willis on the roof and pretends to be another hostage he changes to a convincing American accent. I never found that credible in the movie..."
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Well that's interesting. It's been a while since I saw it, but the way I remember the rooftop scene, I thought "Hans" actually spoke a fairly heavy, obviously fake-sounding, American accent - and this was precisely the joke behind this scene?!

(But as I say, it's been a good while since I saw it...)

Well, I know I sure wish that Zachary had a better corollary in Spanish and I'd most certainly use it, because nobody likes to go around being called Sack all day long.

It is interesting that Chinese people certainly seem to prefer to give foreigners Chinese names, whereas in Japan that never happens.

.

"It is interesting that Chinese people certainly seem to prefer to give foreigners Chinese names, whereas in Japan that never happens."

Due to the syllable inventory of Chinese it is sometimes difficult to approximate the pronounciation of foreign names, maybe it is easier in Japanese?

@Jay,

In order to test Hans, John McClane (Bruce Willis) gives Hans a gun and instructs him to stay with him and not go back to where the hostages are. Then Hans thinks he has the upper hand, points the gun at McClane and goes back to his German accent only to find out that the gun is not loaded.

@Friedemann

I guess you're probably right. As I say, it's been a very long time since I saw the film. (Either way, I do remember "Hans" as being one of the most silky-smooth movie bad-guys of all time!)

BTW I didn't figure you for a fan of the action-movie genre - life is full of surprises! :-D

It depends a lot of where you come from and where you're moving. If you come from a country (or culture) with "high status", I think it's rare to see anybody change their name. Let's say, moving within the European Union, or from Western Europe to the US (or the other way around).

Many names are fairly international and for some there are several versions, e.g. Catherine/Kate/Katarina/Cathy, Anna/Anne/Annie, John/Jonathan/Johnny/Jon/Johan/Johannes. The locals in country X may pronounce it differently, and that's about it.

@Friedemann

One wonders why if Hans was capable of a more "authentic" American accent (although it didn't sound too great to my ears) he didn't just speak with it all the time. I have noticed this is many movies: the bad guy speaks accented English, then when trying to fool the hero they put on a perfect American accent, only to switch back to the heavy accent when they reveal themselves. That would be like me being able to pull off a native accent in German but choosing instead to speak with a heavy American accent in everyday life.

@rwargas22: "...That would be like me being able to pull off a native accent in German but choosing instead to speak with a heavy American accent in everyday life."
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You know, I suspect that many immigrants are entirely relaxed about having a "foreign" accent in English - provided that it is not heavy enough to cause any problems with communication.

In my opinion there are very few people who can pull off a genuinely authentic "native" accent in a second language which was learned as an adult. As a rule there will almost always be something which doesn't quite ring true in the ears of natives.

If someone speaks with an 'almost-but-not-quite-native' accent people could, in some circumstances, actually find that slightly sinister, IMO. Arguably it is actually better to speak English with (for example) a light French accent - that way people will just think "oh, that's a French dude".

(And speaking with a light foreign accent is one way of holding on to ones original identity...)

A few years ago I teached Dutch to a group of Chinese students in Holland. Most of them used an English name next to their Chinese name. They told me that they prefer their English name above a wrong pronunciation of their Chinese name. Knowing this it was a challenge for me to try to pronounce their Chinese name correctly :)