Eileen Chang

Translated by Karen Kingsbury

[1] I MYSELF have an unbearably vulgar name, am well aware of the fact, and have no plans to change it.But I remain extremely interested in people’s names.

[2] To give someone a name is a simple and small-scale act of creation.When the patriarch of days gone by would sit in winter with his feet propped up on a foot-warming brazier, smoking a water pipe, and pick out a name for a newly arrived grandson, his word was all.If the boy was called Guang-mei (Brighten the Threshold), he would end up doing his best to redound honor on the gates of the family house.If he was called Zuyin(Ancestral Privilege) or Chengzu (Indebted to the Ancestor), he would be compelled always to remember his forebears.If he was called Hesheng (Lotus Born), his life would take on something of the coloring of a pond in June.Characters in novels aside, there aren’t many people whose names adequately describe what they are like in reality (and often the opposite is the case and the name represents something they need or lack — nine of ten poor people have names like Jingui [Gold Precious], Ah Fu [Richie], Dayou [Have a Lot].) But no matter how or in what manner, names inevitably become entangled with appearance and character in the process of creating a complete impression of a person.And this is why naming is a kind of creation.

[3] I would like to give someone a name, even though I’ve yet to have the opportunity to do so.It seems that only parents and schoolmasters in the countryside have this right.Besides these, we must also include venerable gentlemen and grand dames who buy servant girls and dancehall madams who procure young women.Such a shame that these people are so sloppy in their execution of these duties, since they rely entirely on precedent: little kids are invariably called Maotou (Kid), Er Maotou (Kid Number Two), San Maotou (Kid the Third); servant girls become Ruyi (As You Wish); and taxi dancers are given foreignsounding names like Manna.

[4] Catholic priests and Protestant pastors also give babies names when they’re baptized (this must be one of the most compelling of their duties), but they never seem to stray very far from the common round of George, Mary, and Elizabeth.I once compiled two or three hundred commonly used English names for girls, and I’m afraid that my list pretty much exhausts the possibilities, even if there are a few that I left out.Customs are handed down, and names are inevitably selected from folkloric traditions and religious history, to the point where one runs everywhere into people with the same names — what a bore! There’s an old joke: someone flips through the entire Bible in search of a relatively distinctive name.He triumphantly informs his pastor that he’s decided on a name no one else has ever used before: Satan.

[5] As for Chinese people, we have all of Wang Yunwu’s great big dictionary of Chinese in which to search for just a couple of characters to represent ourselves.With such an abundance of choices, it seems unforgivable that there are some people who are willing to let themselves be called things like Xiuzhen (Precious) and Zijing (Quiet).

[6] Appropriate names need be neither novel, nor erudite, nor dignified.What is important is that they create a clear image that resonates with a person’s identity.When I read the newspaper, I like looking through the classified ads, sports pages, and lists of recipients of scholarships and small business loans, because I will usually find some good names there.Chai Feng-ying (Firewood Phoenix Flower) and Mao Yi-jian (Frugal Thatch), for instance.Can’t you see the flesh-and-blood figures just waiting to emerge from behind the names? One need hardly mention Mao Yi-jian’s miserable penury.Chai Feng-ying not only sounds like the epitome of the proverbial “precious daughter of a humble home”; her name sounds like it has a story just wriggling to get out, a folksy tale of a beautiful girl rising above her station.I would love to write a story in the near future in which Chai Fengying is the heroine.

[7] Some people say that a name is merely a cipher, without any intrinsic significance.But those who make this argument in print are themselves writing under the imprint of their own carefully crafted pen names.Of course, this is a natural impulse.Who among us does not desire to distinguish himself from the crowd? Even if we lived in an idealized future world in which every citizen was assigned a number like a prisoner and there were no names beyond the numbers themselves, each number would still inescapably take on its own distinct connotation.Three and seven are smartly handsome numbers, while two clearly comes off as rather staid.In Zhang Henshui’s Qinhuai Shijia (The House of Qinhuai) the mischievous girl is called Xiaochun (Little Spring), while Erchun (Second Spring) is her modest and retiring sister.In Ye shen chen (Deep is the night), there is the virtuous Ding Erhe (Second Harmony Ding) and the cautiously conventional Second Miss Tian.

[8] Although a movement to promote the use of signs instead of names could never be pushed through to successful conclusion, it is not an entirely unreasonable notion given the excessive complexity of Chinese names.As soon as your feet hit the ground, you are given a pet name.In the past, pet names were chosen with great care, unlike the perfunctory sorts of endearments common today, such as Nannan (Girlie) and Baobao (Baby).For the vast majority of girls, the pet name is the only name they will ever get.Since they are never going to go to school anyway, there is little use giving them an impressive “school name”, and once they marry they will immediately lose whatever sense of identity they might once have had, becoming merely Miss Zhang nee Li or the like.Everything about a woman should carry with it a touch of mystery, and for this reason, a woman’s pet name is never given out lightly.In the boudoir poetry of women writers, we can see that a newlywed groom who openly calls out the bride’s childhood name is seen as being rather remiss and his lapse deserving of a pouting reproach.

[9] Little boys write out their school names in painstakingly neat characters on their first character primers.If a boy should grow up to be an official, this name then becomes an official title, the invocation of which will be restricted to superiors in the bureaucracy, parents, and teachers.He also has a more informal “style name” for use by friends and relatives belonging to the same generation as himself.There is also a third name that is kept in reserve but never used.These literary sobriquets are relatively free of restriction.Such a name can be changed in honor of the purchase of a particularly fine antique.It can be changed after moving house.It can be changed when he becomes wildly infatuated with an actress and wants to make the liaison public.If names are meant to suggest states of mind, why shouldn’t they shift at any time or any place in accordance with someone’s ever-changing moods?

[10] In Ernv Yingxiong Zhuan (The Story of Lovers and Heroes), Young Master An has an “East Chamber Wife” and a “West Chamber Wife”.He commissions a carved plaque to be placed above the door to the eastern chamber that reads “Banxiang shi” (Fragrant petal boudoir) and one for the western chamber that reads “Banxiang shi” (Fragrant companion boudoir).He goes on to call himself the Banban zhuren (Petal companion lord).When Old Man An sees these signs, he is most perturbed, viewing them as dubious markers of descent into the degenerate frivolity of romance.This passage often fires readers with indignation against the tyranny of the old-style family, so ubiquitous and invasive that even when a son chooses a perfectly harmless sobriquet, the patriarch still feels compelled to interfere.Surely all the name signifies is the son’s desire to enjoy his own wives? And was it not his own father who arranged his union with these women? Despite these objections, however, I still have quite a bit of sympathy for Old Man An, if only because creating superfluous sobriquets is, after all, a rather inane occupation.

[11] What if we were to analyze the question on a more fundamental level? Why ever would someone feel compelled to have several names in the first place? Because, it seems, each individual is multifaceted.What a father sees in a person and what the foreigner at the office sees of the very same person are completely different matters, made so through differentials of power and relative position.Some people like to plaster their walls with mirrors from the ceiling to the floor so that they will always be able to take stock of their own image from several different angles, never tiring of the view.Taking extra names is a similar sort of inflation of the self.But if self-inflation does no harm to others, what’s wrong with using it as a means of amusing oneself? A sort of spiritual superfluity it may well be, but we Chinese have always had a penchant for profligate indulgence in beauty.

[12] The desire for those in the world outside to take an interest in one’s name is an altogether different matter.Perhaps we really believe that when a reader sees our latest incarnation, they say, “Oh, Gongyang Huan.When his first piece was published, he was still going by the name Zang Sun Didong, and when he submitted a manuscript to such and such magazine, he went by Ming Di, but he’s also been called Bai Bo, referred to on occasion as Mu Lian, and apparently the writer who goes by Ying Yuan is really him, too, as is Duan Dai, at least according to some people.In such and such a newspaper, his byline is Dongfang Maozhi, but when he’s acting as the editor for a women’s magazine, he temporarily takes on an appropriately feminized Lin Yanchan, also known as Nu Gui.” Even a prominent public figure who counted on people to commit so many names to memory might be accused of unduly extravagant expectations.How much the more so a writer?

[13] If people do what they are expected to do, they receive the expected amount of recognition.And after ten years or so, when they have finished the job they have set out to do or simply can’t do it anymore, they are forgotten.Society’s memory is not very long, and that is as it should be, and no one really has a right to complain...but there are a great many things out there that people ought, but do not, remember!

[14] When I was still in school, there were at least two other people who had the same name as I did, and no one seemed to think it was funny or lacking in good taste.When the Chinese teachers called out the roll, they never mispronounced my name; when the English teachers read out a name like Wu Wanyun they invariably ran into difficulties, as if their tongues were tied in a butterfly knot.But when they read my name, it always came to them loud and clear.No small mercy!

[15] Recently I’ve begun to think that I ought to be dissatisfied with my name.Why shouldn’t I adopt two lovely and profound characters to make a new one? Even if they would have no impact on whether I’m really lovely and profound myself they might at least prevent a bad first impression on my readers.I seem to remember that someone once said,“The art of succeeding in publishing depends first and foremost on selecting a positively effulgent name.” Could it be true (as Confucius said) that “if the name is incorrect, words will not follow.If words do not follow, deeds will go unaccomplished”?

[16] China is a nation of words.When an emperor met with misfortune, he would immediately change the name of the reign period in hopes of turning the country’s luck in the year to come.What used to be the Twelfth Year of the Martial Advent would suddenly become the Inaugural Year of the Era of Great Celebration, thus putting an immediate end to the sufferings of the past.An excessive faith in the power of words is our most distinctive characteristic.

[17] Everything in China sounds just a little bit too good, rolls just a little too easily off the tongue.Certainly, not everything that sounds or looks bad from the outside is necessarily useful, but the most useful people are often the most ordinary.I am willing to keep my unbearably vulgar name as a warning to myself that I must find a way to rid myself of the fussiness with words of the typical well-read intellectual and begin to look for life through its essentials: wood, rice, oil, salt, soap, water, and sun.

[18] This story has wound its way back to the beginning.Wanting to become an ordinary person and starting from the fact that one has an ordinary name is admittedly another form of “word worship”.Perhaps these are merely excuses.The reason I feel such a fond attachment to my name is tied up with my memory of how I came to be named.When I was ten, my mother proclaimed that I should be sent to school, and my father raised a huge storm of protest and refused to give his consent.Finally, my mother personally carried me to school over his loud protests, like a kidnapper.As she filled out the school registration card, she hesitated, uncertain what name to write down.My childhood name had been Zhang Ying, but that sounded a bit too reedy and dull.She propped her head against her hand and thought for a moment before saying, “Let’s transcribe your English name into Chinese for the time being.” She always planned to change it someday but never did; now, I wouldn’t want to change it anyway.

Notes

1.Eileen Chang (1920-1995): She was a Chinese writer.She is noted for her fiction writings that deal with the tensions between men and women in love, and are considered by some scholars to be among the best Chinese literature of the period.

2.“What Is Essential Is That Names Be Right”: Chang alludes to the words of Confucius in Analects.Asked by a disciple what the first priority in governance ought to be, Confucius replies,“What is essential is that the names be right.” Without such a rectification of names, he continues, “words will not follow — If words do not follow, deeds will go unaccomplished...”

3.Wang Yunwu (1888-1979): He was for many years the editor-in-chief of the largest and most influential Shanghai publishing house of the modern era, The Commercial Press, as well as the inventor of the “four corner” indexing system used in many Chinese character dictionaries.