Later this month I am going to be teaching a 'film studies' class to some students at the Communications University, substituting for a friend for a few weeks.
It's been a long time since I did any classroom teaching, so I'm hoping I may have had time to recharge the batteries and recover some of my old zest for it - I had been getting terribly stale and bored with the whole process a year or so ago.
However, it is going to take quite some time just to get through checking the attendance with this lot. I think I may well be forced to give them my patented 30-minute mini-lesson on choosing a sensible English name.
This bunch of students are really quite staggering: almost every single one of them has chosen a classically daft 'English name'.
Some are just about OK, though perhaps just a little too exotic or non-English: Lopez, Hans.
Some are acceptable English, but have somewhat unfortunate pop-culture connotations: Hannibal, Conan.
Some are just horribly out-of-date or uncool (a particular vice among the girls, who seem to raid Victorian novels for their inspiration too often): Doreen, Mavis.
Some are creatively misspelled: Rion, Jammey, Geroge, Urey (was he aiming at 'Yuri' or 'Urea', I wonder), Roye, Jessy, Dephanie. Dephanie?!
Then we get all the 'Summer of Love' hippy names: Summer, Flower, Sky, Rain.
And then surnames used as first names: Kidd, Jolie, Miller, Mackenzie (acceptable as a first name for a Scot).
Then we're into the adjectives: Strong, Brave.
Especially colours: White, Black, Mauve!
And verbs: Sing.
A noun or two: Balance.
The odd wacky film reference: Iceman, Spiderman.
And the occasional 'commercial break': Zippo.
And then we're into the serious bizarrerie: Momo (an African tribe??), Zacol (is that a proprietary drug?), Webzen (a great name for an Internet company, a terrible name for a human being), Desea (is this what the Russians did to the Aral Sea?), Lemonz (perhaps acceptable for a 'rap name', but not for a regular name!).
But the winner, the dumbest non-name in a class full of risible monickers, is: Noodle.
Why, oh why, oh why?
9 comments:
Glad to see that you finally got around to this topic, Froog...and, as you say, an utterly bizarre crop.
I have had quite a few Chinese students with names like 'Doris' and 'Clarence' in my time, but yours truly take the biscuit.
As mentioned before, the only other country that I have personally come across with this bizarre proclivity to 'anglicise' their names is Malawi. I think that I mentioned 'Nicewell' already - and some friends also had a houseboy called 'Benson' (which will be screamingly funny to anyone with a knowledge of 1970s/80s American television, but will otherwise be a relatively unremarkable star in the galaxy that contains such delights as 'Zacol' and 'Desea').
Curiously the Malawians also have the problem that many orientals (notably Japanese) have with differentiating between the English 'L' and 'R' sounds. I had a bizarre conversation with a Malawian boy some years ago in which I asked his name and he said "Cralence". I paused for thought and said "Do you mean 'Clarence'?" and he nodded and said "Yes, sir, Cralence".
The Malawians also seemed to know only certain stock phrases in English and used them on all conceivable and inconceivable occasions (the similarities with the Chinese are getting spooky, are they not?). A standard exchange with Malawian village kids was (from them) "How a-la you?" to which the standard reply was "Fine" at which they would beam and say "Fine!" and run away giggling. On one memorable occasion a kid ran up to me when I was at a very low ebb and beamed "How a-la you?" at which point (thoughtlessly) I said "Bloody awful - I've got dysentery and malaria" (which In fact I had) and the kind beamed and said "Fine!" and ran away giggling.
Ah, the English language - such a fine tool for the propagation of international peace, love and understanding...
Talking of tools...
My wildly inventive (and rather smutty) imagination strikes again.
'Lemonz'? Cut in half they are small, yellow bumpz aren't they... the poor girl has a lack of imagination that rivals that of Ephraim Zimbalist Jr's parents.
Benson! LOL.
As for Noodle, maybe she or he is a fan of the Gorillaz. (I cannot claim to be a fan or know much about them. I only know one song, and had to research to fulfill my curiosity as to what exactly a virtual band was.)
Anyway, this is pretty funny. We were pretty boring when choosing our names in Spanish class, weren't we? I should have called myself Albondigaz.
You dated yourself there by recognising the 'Benson' reference, OMG! Nice to find a few more 'wrinklies' on this 'ere blog :-)
You fond of meatballs then?
Mothman, you ungallant brute!
I am sure the delightful OMG is at least half a generation younger than us. I think Benson lasted much longer than Soap, and is probably still perpetually in re-runs on one of the 'nostalgia' channels.
Ah, yes...nostalgia channels... I remember those :-)
In the last example, the guy must have seen GoodFellas and got it slightly wrong: Robert de Niro played the part of Noodles.
It was only a nickname, though. And that was De Niro in Once Upon A Time In America.
I had a friend here a few years back who did IELTS examining. She used to amuse herself by reporting by SMS on the most amusing faux pas she heard in each session of the oral interviews she did on the weekends.
She told of one young chap who entered the exam room and said, "Hello. My name is Foreskin."
My friend appended the comment: "His teacher must hate him."
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