{"id":576,"date":"2009-05-12T16:00:24","date_gmt":"2009-05-12T16:00:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/onecity\/2009\/05\/flexible-names.html"},"modified":"2009-05-12T16:00:24","modified_gmt":"2009-05-12T16:00:24","slug":"flexible-names","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/2009\/05\/flexible-names.html","title":{"rendered":"Flexible names, fluid world"},"content":{"rendered":"

Emily’s post this morning reminded me of an article<\/a> I encountered in Slate a couple of weeks ago about Chinese names and the prevalance of the use of English names in China. The author,\u00a0Huan Hsu, writes that they have become\u00a0de rigueur<\/span> among the business community, even in circumstances where Chinese people interact only with one another.<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n
Hsu attributes the casual attitude towards names in China to a cultural difference I found\u00a0intriguing (bold is mine):<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

In the\u00a0<\/span>United States<\/span>, people tend to view names and identities as absolute things<\/span>–which explains why I agonized over deciding on an English name–but in\u00a0<\/span>China<\/span>, identities are more amorphous.<\/span> My friend Sophie flits amongst her Chinese name, English name, MSN screen name, nicknames she uses with her friends, and diminutives that her parents call her. “They’re all me,” she says. “A name is just a\u00a0dai hao.<\/span>”\u00a0Dai hao,<\/span>\u00a0or code name, can also refer to a stock’s ticker symbol.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This also calls to mind for me an observation Alan Watts makes in The Way of Zen<\/span>:<\/p>\n


<\/span><\/div>\n

In English the differences between objects and actions are
\nclearly, if not always logically, distinguished. But a great number of Chinese
\nwords do duty for both nouns and verbs–so that one who thinks in Chinese has
\nlittle difficulty in seeing that objects are also events, that our world is a
\ncollection of processes rather than things. (pg 5)\u00a0<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

<\/div>\n

I don’t know if this resistance to solidifying and concretizing experience and identity that seems to be evident in the Chinese language is attributable in an part to Buddhist influence. But I’d be curious to hear from bilingual folks out there: do you find speaking and thinking in Chinese more congruent with the Buddhist understanding of the transience and fluidity of experience?<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n
PS: In his otherwise excellent memoir, Bones of the Master<\/span>, George Crane lifts Watts’ sentence verbatim without attribution on page 28. Authors take note, I suspect Google Books has only just begun to expose this stuff, so you might want to watch your\u00a0shila<\/a><\/span> here.<\/span><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Emily’s post this morning reminded me of an article I encountered in Slate a couple of weeks ago about Chinese names and the prevalance of the use of English names in China. The author,\u00a0Huan Hsu, writes that they have become\u00a0de rigueur among the business community, even in circumstances where Chinese people interact only with one…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":193,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-576","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-buddhism"],"yoast_head":"\nFlexible names, fluid world - One City<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/2009\/05\/flexible-names.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Flexible names, fluid world - One City\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Emily’s post this morning reminded me of an article I encountered in Slate a couple of weeks ago about Chinese names and the prevalance of the use of English names in China. The author,\u00a0Huan Hsu, writes that they have become\u00a0de rigueur among the business community, even in circumstances where Chinese people interact only with one…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/2009\/05\/flexible-names.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"One City\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2009-05-12T16:00:24+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Greg Zwahlen\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Flexible names, fluid world - One City","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/2009\/05\/flexible-names.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Flexible names, fluid world - One City","og_description":"Emily’s post this morning reminded me of an article I encountered in Slate a couple of weeks ago about Chinese names and the prevalance of the use of English names in China. The author,\u00a0Huan Hsu, writes that they have become\u00a0de rigueur among the business community, even in circumstances where Chinese people interact only with one…","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/2009\/05\/flexible-names.html","og_site_name":"One City","article_published_time":"2009-05-12T16:00:24+00:00","author":"Greg Zwahlen","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/2009\/05\/flexible-names.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/2009\/05\/flexible-names.html","name":"Flexible names, fluid world - One City","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/#website"},"datePublished":"2009-05-12T16:00:24+00:00","dateModified":"2009-05-12T16:00:24+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/#\/schema\/person\/6aede7186f63611a529a4a16cce5df54"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/2009\/05\/flexible-names.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/2009\/05\/flexible-names.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/2009\/05\/flexible-names.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Flexible names, fluid world"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/","name":"One City","description":"The Interdependence Project","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/#\/schema\/person\/6aede7186f63611a529a4a16cce5df54","name":"Greg Zwahlen","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/706\/7066c07c9d69ab14d18489c3b85d90d2x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/706\/7066c07c9d69ab14d18489c3b85d90d2x96.jpg","caption":"Greg Zwahlen"},"description":"Greg Zwahlen began practicing meditation and studying Buddhism in 2000 and joined the ID Project at its inception in 2005. He lives in New York City, where he is also a member of the Shambhala Meditation Center of New York. He has undertaken advanced study over the past few years at the Rime Shedra Rime of New York City, the Mipham Academy under Khenpo Gawang, and the Nitartha Institute for Higher Buddhist Studies.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/author\/gzwahlen"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/576","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/193"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=576"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/576\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=576"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=576"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=576"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}