I Assume the Role of Mr. Bumble

In the second chapter of Oliver Twist, the villanous beadle, Mr. Bumble, explains how he was able to give a name to the eponymous hero, whose mother died before revealing her name, and hence the child's rightful surname. Mr. Bumble, it seems, has a system:

"'We name our fondlings [sic] in alphabetical order. The last was a S,--Swubble, I named him. This was a T,--Twist, I named _him_. The next one comes will be Unwin, and the next Vilkins. I have got names ready made to the end of the alphabet, and all the way through it again, when we come to Z.''"

I thought of the odious Bumble this evening, when a family of three came into our school to inquire about English lessons. A good friend of Ruby's, the father was formerly a detective with the local police but now works in immigration--perhaps a boon to me, as I will have visa issues to sort out--and his wife, I inferred, is one of Ruby's oldest and dearest friends. When they came into the school, I introduced myself and asked her her name.

She told me she had no English name, and Ruby intimated to me that I might have to give these three people their English names.

I have written previously about the use of English names in Taiwan. But it had not really occurred to me that I may soon have to bestow English names upon Chinese students.

Now, it happens that I have a longstanding fascination with names. When I used to try to write fiction, one of the things I liked best was to pore over baby name books to find just the right names for characters. I have always been intrigued by how names affect destinies--how we make one set of assumptions about a woman named Beulah and a completely different set about a woman named Bambi. But the prospect of naming an actual, flesh-and-blood person who is not my child--who has, in fact, a child of his or her own--is more than a tad strange.

How on earth does one go about such a thing? I thought I might start with the Chinese name, and try to pick things that had similar sounds in English. But since so many Chinese names seem to start with only a handful of distinct sounds, this might prove impractical over the long run. Or I could try based on meaning; find an English name that has the same meaning. This, however, might prove time-consuming and ultimately fruitless, as it would involve first translating the Chinese name into English, and then trying to find a name--a name that could be of Italian, Swedish, or Irish origins--with the same meaning.

I could fall back on English literature--this is an English school, after all--and end up producing a lot of little Emmas (Bovary) and Fitzwilliams (Darcy).

Then there's the whole ethnic question. Is it right to rechristen a multitude of Han Chinese people with the names of the British landed gentry, of the Scottish highlands, of the Lower East Side shtetl? Do I have a right to comb my own family tree in order to replace a Chinese name that may go back in someone's family literally for millennia?

What's hardest about this is the cavalier attitude that seems to prevail among Taiwanese people about these Western names. This is hard for a post-melting pot American to fathom. Back on the Upper West Side, every Rachel Cohen suddenly wanted to be Rahel, with that thick gutteral het sound unpronounceable to non-Jews. Gentiles seem to get into the ethnic thing, too. For instance, iIn Anne Tyler's latest novel, Digging to America, an Iranian-American family gives the baby they adopt from Korea an American name so run-of-the-mill that it completely escapes my mind; the white American couple choose instead to use their daughter's birth name of Jing-Ho.

Maybe it's silly to worry about this. The Taiwanese seem to regard these Western names the way white slaveholders in the Old South regarded the names of their black slaves--not as existential expressions of identity but, as one character in the TV miniseries Roots put it, "sumpin' to call 'em." If that's their attitude, so be it--I can't be considered guilty of cultural imperialism if the people who carry on the culture don't ascribe great value to keeping their real names. But then there's that nagging American part of me that says all of this is wrong. After all, the most meaningful part of becoming Jewish was getting to choose my own Jewish name--to tell the world (or at least that part of it that can identify the Amidah) that I was Mordecai Moshe.

So what's a politically correct American to do? It's sad that the best idea I can think of is a system like Mr. Bumble's. It certainly would be straightforward and practical. Keep one list of men's names, one list of women's, and just go down the list for each student who comes in needing a name. Amelia, Beatrice, Charlotte--no muss, no fuss.

Hmm...maybe, like Fagin, I think I'd better think it out again.