His name is Bong, James Bong

By Raymond Zhou ( Chinadaily.com.cn ) Updated: 2007-01-16 21:21:20

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Juliet asked Romeo: "What's in a name?"

I go one step further: "What's in a surname?"

The name game in China is so full of information and mystique that even if you know Chinese you'd be overwhelmed.

When I was a kid, I thought there were only 100 surnames in China, ignorant that Hundred Family Surnames could mean "countless unfamiliar ones not included". A typical surname is so untethered from the original meaning of the word that nobody named Wang (literally King) would have any hint of royal supremacy. But it took on special connotation in the canon of revolutionary arts and literature.

When a "model" opera assumed Diao as the surname of its crafty villain, it basically summed up the character in one, well, character. And a classmate of mine with the same moniker was instantly turned into a target of peer taunting.

I never thought of myself as a "week" since zhou the week and zhou the family name were written differently until our language was simplified in the 1950s. I was proud to share my name with Zhou Enlai, beloved premier of New China, not knowing how close he was to being toppled by the Gang of Four.

But the premier's high stature did not save me when a best-selling children's book came out. Its evil landlord forced his underage child laborers to work during the wee hours by forcing the rooster to crow before the set time. The baddie was Zhou.

A friend who is a language professor at Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou can rattle off the last name of each character on television. She is not a soap opera junkie, but just knows the secret to christening fictional individuals by way of association. Many times, she hits it home, and for those she misses, I have the feeling that the aliases she coins are a better fit.

Today, if you don't like your given name, you can change it, but few would tinker with their family names. Even big-name writers with pen names, such as Ba Jin or Cao Yu, would still name their children after the original family names.

Turning back on your family roots is considered a disgrace. Thanks to the Internet, people can adopt and change their handles as frequently as they fancy while keeping the family label gloriously intact in real life.

So when I met a "Fifth Element" recently, I assumed he was a big fan of Luc Besson. But no! That's his real name. It can be traced back to the Three Kingdoms (AD 220-280), when a big family named Tian had to embark on an exodus. They divided into eight numerated units and scattered. Later, the other branches were all killed off, Fifth Element claimed. But I suspect they all secretly changed their names back to Tian.

Unless you are James Bond or a prisoner, you would not want to be identified only by a number -- QQ numbers excepted.

Speaking of 007, a friend surnamed Pang took on the English name James. Now he introduces himself as James Bong. (Most Westerners read ang as ong, anyway.) A totally unrelated friend named Diao (crafty again) chose Christian as his English given name. So, now he is Christian Dior.

(China Daily 01/16/2007 page20)