OF NAMES AND TITLES

As a child I used to go to the cinema to watch Chinese martial arts films. There were usually rival martial arts schools with each school trying to be the best in the region. It was not uncommon for students of rival schools to crash into their competitors’ courtyards to try to disrupt kungfu lessons. When things got ugly and fights broke out, the first thing the rivals would do was to literally bring down the name of the school, usually engraved on a wooden board and hung up high, and break it into two. This amounted to the greatest humiliation a school could face.
In Asian cultures generally, names and titles are important. The name that a person has is usually chosen with great care by his parents to depict the best qualities ever that a child could have. Titles on the other hand symbolise respect and we address our aunts and uncles by their respective titles in accordance to their seniority and level of kinship. As a child, I dreaded going to my relatives’ houses because I had to address them by their titles according to which side of the family they were from. I would get an earful from my mother if I had used the wrong titles.
Acquired titles whether academic or bestowed upon for great achievements are also greatly guarded and carried with pride. I know of many who would feel offended if they are not ‘properly’ addressed.

Living in a land of strangers in Ireland, the first thing that I learn is that laughter is the best medicine and if I am not offended when no one knows my name or who I am or what I have been, then I am alright. Winston Churchill once said that ‘attitude is everything.’

Walking down the street one day with a bag of groceries, I laughed when a friendly Irish called out to me, ‘Fine day! Are you the latest kitchen help at the Chinese takeaway down the street?’

In another instance, I was at a poetry recitation gathering at a café nearby. A group of poetry lovers and academics had gathered for tete-a-tete. They were discussing the latest conferences and seminars which they assumed I would probably not have understood as I might have been a foreign house-help to one of the lecturers there.

Then there is this great difficulty of pronouncing Chinese names and recognising a Chinese face. To them apparently all Chinese look alike and all surnames must follow the first names. It is a great revelation to many that we do look different and our surnames come before our first names even though China has the largest population in the world and it has been one of the earliest civilizations.

I have been called by so many other names each time an acquaintances tries to remember my two syllabic name. So to make things easier I settled for ‘Soo’ which I thought was simple enough until a helpful acquaintance in a gardening class decided to label my rose cutting pot for me. She wrote ‘Susan’ beautifully and I asked, ‘Who’s Susan?’ and we all had a good laugh when the truth was revealed.
Then when I gave a dentist my name over the phone, he double confirmed it by saying ‘Sierra Oscar Oscar’? (A phonetic alphabet used to identify letters in a message transmitted by radio or the telephone)

I said, ‘Yes’.
He then realised that I must be non-Irish and probably didn’t speak much English, so he very kindly said again, ‘Sugar Orange Orange’?
When I related the incident to my family members we almost died laughing.

If names are difficult to deal with, titles in most cases are almost non-existent.
I made the acquaintance of a nice lady at the local mini market and the first problem that I faced was how to address her. Should I call her Mrs or Ma’am? With a weather beaten face that once saw better days, she whispered gently, just call me Evelyn.
That I found both strange and difficult to do. Disrespectful even since she is much older than I am. Back in Malaysia it is common to address an older person as Uncle Lim or Pak Cik Awang although he may not be related at all. We even have ‘Uncle Lim’s Kopitiam” and that café is certainly not run by our uncle. Likewise the senior woman who sells tau-foo-fah by the roadside could very well be Aunty Mary to all and sundry.

Children can call their caregivers kakak if they come from Indonesia and the Malay boy who sells noodles at the canteen is also known as Abang.

All said and done, the Irish are lovely people and people who can laugh at themselves. When an Irish acquaintance asked me what I am doing in Ireland, I said I married an Irish.

He replied, ‘You’ve married the worst kind’.

SOURCE: THE NEW STRAITS TIMES http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P1-199653308.html
6 NOVEMBER 2011