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So in my college they take roll. Very often we hav exchange or foreign students. I noticed that many foreign students, especially asian students, go by american nick names, like zoey or mary. Do other countries see this or is this an american thing only?

This is funny, becouse I just asks an older Hawaiian friend way his names Jack and his kid's name is Mana'olana (hope I spelled it write). It turns out until the 60's law required all Hawaiian have a English name. So not only do people choose to use English names in the U.S., we once made it law to make it easier on us.

 hotsauceman1 wrote:
So in my college they take roll. Very often we hav exchange or foreign students. I noticed that many foreign students, especially asian students, go by american nick names, like zoey or mary. Do other countries see this or is this an american thing only?

Well a lot of the 'my age' people of asian descent that I know have a western name for their friends (us) to use which is only barely related to their actual name, which their parents etc use. I don't think its a purely American thing, but it does seem to be more common in the general asian community, as the indian/sri lankan/etc kids that I went to school with didn't do this, we used their normal names.

Well one time in university our professor was handing back one of your essays and called out Xui Zhang (or something similar). My friend Joe stood up and grabbed his paper.

Apparently my friend Joe is not really named Joe lol.....

I have a fraternity brother whose name is Yin Peng (or Peng Yin). His American name was Raven... he was a wrestling fan

Noir wrote:
his kid's name is Mana'olana (hope I spelled it write).

If I know anything about Hawaiian names, you need at least four additional apostrophes, maybe five.

 rubiksnoob wrote:

Noir wrote:
his kid's name is Mana'olana (hope I spelled it write).

If I know anything about Hawaiian names, you need at least four additional apostrophes, maybe five.

Also you didn't spell right right. Right?

idk. I've never seen this happen. Around here (New Jersey) people usually make a point of knowing each others names. Even nicknames aren't all that common

It's possible one of the reasons for this is the location of the surname in Chinese, as the family name traditionally comes first.

Never heard of anything like that amongst my expat friends outside of nicknames given to them by their friends. Which really doesn't count.

When I went to college, we had people from other parts of the world (since fer Asians and Europeans, our education is dirty cheap and has a decent level), but the only ones who adopted local names were the ones from China.

The few japanese ah've met kept their names.

I for one, when talking to English speakers, I "translate" my name, which is just adding an "h" to it.

Yeah a lot of Indians and Asians seem to do it.

As far as I know its common with people of Asian, or at least Chinese descent. My best friend hates being called by her given name, and I didn't even know that what she was going by wasn't what appears on her Birth Certificate until last year. ...Though what she goes by happens to be a Russian name.

That said I know plenty of people that go by non Anglicised names, so I guess its just up to the person. I've asked my friends that do it about it before, but they put it down to their parents wanting them to integrate more.

I've seen it a few times with African blacks and Asians here. Thing is, it's not exactly expected or even all that common - it's kind of the exception rather than the rule.

More common I think are foreign parents who decide to give their UK-born children a "normal" English name. So you have names like David Ononokpono or Michael Chang (made up, of course).

At my University in here there are a TON of east asian international students, and a lot of them do exactly this, like the guy who's friend Joe wasn't really Joe. It's super common among the Chinese students

Just. ...Make sure you don't pick something that'll become a meme amongst your friends. Not a day goes by this isn't sung to my friend. After Barbie Girl its what his TA squad sing in chemical drills.