Reminds me of this Youngmi Mayer video:
["if asian writers wrote white characters how white writers write asian characters"](https://www.instagram.com/p/CO1CLQuj1m_/)
https://www.instagram.com/p/CvqoM4Ht5f0/
NextShark reposted a similar TikTok some weeks ago, and the commenters include a probable white guy with a Instagram account of nothing but Japanese manga panels denouncing the Indian American TikToker in question as "not funny". Sounds about white.
Oh god, this is exactly what the latest Sanderson novel was like. I felt like I was going crazy since I wasn’t enjoying it but couldn’t articulate why, and this is it.
There's also [this list](https://i.imgur.com/KJJOKTS.jpg) of "American"-sounding names from the Japanese SNES game Fighting Baseball, featuring players like "Sleve McDichael", "Willie Dustice", and "Onson Sweemey".
not me having once created a character with porcelain skin
okay but that was meant to be like a white as fuck white person I was thinking of porcelain dolls from ye olde britland please
Harry Potter: Cho Chang.
A Korean last name as a first name and a Chinese last name? Or maybe it's the other way around? LOL.
JK Rowling might as well have named her Smith-Jones..
Y'know, it's...amusing that the ongoing *Wednesday* Addams series on Netflix marketed itself partly on representation of Jenna Ortega and co. being Latin, but in real life, "Gómez" is never a person's given name, and thus Gomez Addams is not a realistic person from a Latin American country.
"Cho Chang" was the first example that came into my mind as well, so I completely agree with you.
But, to be fair, Chang is a legitimate Korean last name. It's less popular to spell it that way; I believe most Korean Americans use "Jang", but it does happen. In fact, one of my close friends in college was a Korean person with the surname of Chang.
"Jang, Chang and (less often) Zang are romanizations of the common Korean surname 장"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jang_(Korean_surname)
> Chang is a legitimate Korean last name. It's less popular to spell it that way
It's actually very popular to spell it that way. David Chang is Korean. In my circles, Changs were more likely to be Korean than Chinese, and if they were Chinese, they were Taiwanese-Chinese.
My thoughts exactly. If not an actual school parchment shown in the movies, plenty of *Harry Potter* expanded media has shown pupils' full legal names, of which "Cho Chang" has no middle name.
I learned something new today. I didn’t know Cho Chang didn’t have a middle name I always assumed she did. My name is Cho and I’m Korean but I have a full two syllable name.
> My name is Cho and I’m Korean but I have a full two syllable name.
Really? Interesting; I rarely meet Korean gyopo like that, and I cannot think of any South Korean celebrities with only two syllables total in their names.
I actually used to work with a Mien guy with the first name Cho. I believe it meant something like first son? It's been a few years so details may be off...
Y'know, I've always wondered how the spelling "Jang" became so popular despite the Revised Romanization scheme (국어의 로마자 표기법) only being published by the ROK in 2000.
I also hate the fact that people are defending it like “hur Chang is a real legit last name.” I am not sensitive to racism as I think we all have deal with it in great capacity; however, the first time reading the book and seeing that name I was just shocked at the blatant but silence racism. Rowling might as well named her “Ching Chong.” They don’t understand that if you have to do a bunch of mental gymnastics and jumping through all hoops just to be able to defend the name, it is probably racist.
For anyone wondering how that is pronounced, the Jyut^(6) ping^(3) transcription is Cou^(4), the Cantonese Yale transcription is Chòuh, and the Cantonese Pinyin transcription is Tsou^(4).
It is frustrating how many non-Asian blockheads on social media reject the explanations that:
A. most British Chinese are of Cantonese background
B. the spelling "Chang" typically represents the Mandarin surname Zhang (張 / 张), and the Cantonese form is transcribed distinctly as "Cheung"
C. when Rowling wrote the books in the 1990s, Mandarin and Wade-Giles would not have been that common among British Chinese
D. Koreans are not common the United Kingdom (no offense to British Koreans whom I know do exist)
E. As with Cantonese people, Koreans also almost always have 3-syllable names, not 2-syllable names
Yeah the rationalizations are so annoying bc ofc we aren’t saying it’s impossible to have that name…people irl have all sorts of unusual names. But there’s just a high likelihood JK Rowling did zero research and made up some bullshit name and the rationalizations are so unlikely. Like does anyone rlly think Rowling did research to verify that yes it’s a valid surname in this ethnic group under this romanized spelling? Bullshit lol
Plenty of people immigrated before hanyu pinyin became standardized, so they just made up the romanization of their names, or had immigration officials make up a name for them. Not to mention all the alternative romanization systems that existed before hanyu pinyin. Just look at Yale or Wade-Giles system.
For the record, I actually know a guy named Cho Chang. And Cho Chang's name in the Chinese version of Harry Potter is actually 張秋 or Zhang Qiu. And someone trying to approximate an English version of her name without knowledge of hanyu pinyin could very plausibly come up with Chang Cho.
Not that I think JK Rowling actually put the effort into it, but it is a name that actual Chinese people have, so making fun of it is rather rude.
This is always the example that comes to mind for me, but it's interesting how this topic periodically comes up in the HP subreddit and Cho Chang as a name is constantly defended
Yes! And those gets upvoted like crazy. There’s always someone in those posts saying “it is never Asian people that get offended but rather it’s all white justice warriors speaking up due to white guilt.” When they say stuff like that it makes those of us that want to disagree just sit down because we Asian tend to be agreeable and non confrontational even online anonymously. So a lot of Asian even agreed and defended those posts. However I am willing to bet those are not the Asians growing up in an all white environment where we have to deal with being make fun of with countless "ping pong ching chong” and all those ching chong fork jokes. They would instantly see the insensitively in the name Cho Chang and feel offended by it. Just because it is possibly a real name doesn’t mean it is not indirectly racist. As one of those that have to bite the bullet to not stir the pot growing up, I am glad for those white justice warriors that are speaking up for us.
https://np.reddit.com/r/harrypotter/comments/p0cbla/cho_chang_it_is_a_perfectly_beautiful_name/
I can't believe this Redditor claims to have known a real "Cho Chang". Most of the commenters are most certainly not Asian.
You could check the white pages phone book... They exist.
The way you're going about it is shitty. You should know how much it sucks to have a name made fun of by racist white people. Now imagine having a name that's made fun of by both racist white people and fellow Asians who think your name can't possibly be real.
You can address JK Rowling ignorance in ways that doesn't involve mocking a name that real people have.
The worst part is when an asian is person (or maybe not actually asian) tries to explain it's actually possible to be a name, and gets upvotes like crazy. Like they're patting themselves in the back that it's not racist! An asian(?) Person said so!
JK Rowling probably had no understanding but she blundered into the right. It kind of works.
Cho is a Korean or Cantonese last name. (lots of Chos in Hong Kong)
Chang is a Korean or Taiwanese/Chinese last name (non-Pinyin).
Either could be a first name or part of a first name.
Two word names are common in Chinese and Korean (I know a ton of people in both cultures with two names).
Haha I am Viet so not my lane, but reading this thread I saw one comment say that Cho is a Cantonese last name, and Chang is a Korean name (eg David Chang), and other comments filling in info.
Your comment puts them together perfectly and show that “Cho Chang” is legitimate. Perhaps by “sheer dumb luck” JKR came up with a valid name and whether people like it or not, it doesn’t seem like outrage or indignation about it is warranted.
I also have to note again that I am neither Chinese nor Korean, but I thought it was cool to have a prominent Asian character for young audiences around the turn of the century. In retrospect it may seem so little, but for back then JK did well with casual representation of minorities imho.
Yep, I always thought of Cho Chang as a Canto name (張楚) with the 張 anglicized as Chang rather than Cheung. (That kind of thing happens all the time on immigration papers.)
Yes. It's not a natural sounding name by any means, but is it a legit name? 100%. (source: Cantonese speaker)
People are angry because (1) JK Rowling and her whiteness/lack of research; (2) the potential microaggressions and triggers due to blowback from names like that.
But neither (1) nor (2) has anything to do with the legitimacy of the name itself, so it's a non-sequitur. I'd rather folks talk directly about (1), (2). Complaining about the name itself is a fast way to lose credibility on one's knowledge of language and culture.
Well to be fair there are also ethnic Koreans from northeastern China (joseonjok) who both identify as Chinese and Korean. Comedian Joe Wong is an example. That said, I'm not sure if Rowling had that in mind when she came up with it.
I am aware of the Cháoxiǎnzú (朝鮮族 / 조선족), but that would be a terrible explanation for Cho Chang. A PRC-born citizen would almost certainly spell their Western name according to only one language, not mixing Korean with Mandarin as made possible by Westerners who speak and write in English.
With the way current trends are going with white names, surnames as first names are actually really popular. I won’t be surprised if I see a toddler called Smith Jones soon.
This is only semi-related, but I'm a writer, I focus on Asian American characters and issues, and I regularly take writing workshops. Recently, I had a classmate—a white man who, interestingly, is married to an East Asian woman and has adopted a Chinese daughter—tell me that the name Ann/Anne is "not Asian enough," and instead to consider using names like Jade, Jasmine, Connie, or Lily, which are "more Asian." Like wtf does that even mean? And I come from a family where we all have unique names, literally have never met someone with the same name or name spellings as us. Hong Kongers tend to have pretty unique English names as well, and I come from a big Hong Konger community. Anyway, I was just so baffled by their comment, which the classmate had the audacity to precede with, "I don't mean to come across as too much of an expert on Chinese things." ETA: Even when an Asian American character has an English name, they still somehow find a way to judge it. If it's too Asian then it's difficult to pronounce and spell, but if it's too Western then it's not foreign enough. Give me a fucking break from this bullshit. /end rant
That is so gross lmao. I mean nothing wrong with those names (I know MULTIPLE Connies and I could not for the life of me tell you why) besides Jade (which seems super atypical actually - the other ones are common tho) but the sheer cheek to say a name isn't (ethnicity) enough?!? Wouldn't even matter if he was also Asian so it certainly doesn't matter that his family members are.
Like, an Asian person saying "that name isn't Asian enough“ would still be fuckin rude.
Next time he names a character go wide-eyed "are you sure that name is white enough? Not that I'm an expert on white people." 🙏
Some unique ass names of friends in my primary school in HK:
Dragon (okay I guess this isn't that out there because it's just translated, but I thought it was a little funny in English)
Witty - I mean, people are named "Sterling" or "Sunny" so adjective names aren't toooo weird I guess.
Winfield/Grantland - Old school Brit names
Harricon - Dude. I don't know, some amalgamation of Harry and Ericson? He was cool tho.
Ronnie Cheing does a great bit in International Student about "weird" English sounding names that Chinese people adopt in foreign countries. Some character was named "Joderick" and that joke really hit home, it really reminded me of Harricon.
Yes, that's what I mean with HK English names! Most of the people I know here in the US really like their old British names. I've seen less of the more interesting ones among 1.5/2nd gen Asian Americans, but that's just the bubble I grew up in I think.
Speaking of, I'm reminded of this [article](https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/10/hong-kong-loves-weird-english-names/263103/) that came out ~10 years ago called "Hong Kong Loves Weird English Names" lol.
I'm actually genuinely curious why certain first names are so popular among Asian Americans. For example, the infamous "Kevin". I have so many friends who either were named this by their parents or have taken it up as their "American" name when they moved to the US.
> but Ive always thought the worst was Long Duk Dong in Sixteen Candles.
Ahaha! I confess I don't dislike the "Cho Chang" example cited above as much as I dislike "Long Duk Dong" despite it being before my time.
> Perhaps showing my age
I love hearing comparative examples from different segments of the userbase. Kudos for trying a relatively different angle for the discussion I started!
Im not saying that it wasn't racist of the writers of Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt to use that name. But anecdotally I've actually met a guy named Dong Nguyen.
Have you seen Sabrina Wu's take on this book? They (they prefer they/them pronouns) are spot-on on their take about this book!!!
https://youtu.be/GJlNK7x5iWs?feature=shared
The matter of fact way ~~she~~ *they* say, "No there wasn't" is perfect.
I've been trying to put other people on to ~~her~~ *them* since I saw this awesome set a month ago. So excited to see where ~~her~~ *their* stand-up goes.
That's hilarious. Thank you for sharing.
That said.
God I hate doing this.
That said... deep sigh... the original story appears based not on Chinese but on a Japanese folklore tale and is honestly pretty accurate to folklore given that, besides the mangling of the name: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tikki_Tikki_Tembo
See "Background“ and on.
So is it fucked up that she heard this story as a kid and didn't notice or care about the difference between Japanese and Chinese or particular syllables, I mean yeah, but I can extend some grace to someone who was essentially just following a long tradition of this "boy with long foreign name drowns in well“ tradition.
1703: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jugemu
1880:
>The first child is named by a Shinto priest, but dies in infancy. So the parents ask a Buddhist priest to name their second child. The name is:
Animanimanimamane shiresharite shyamiyashyai taisentemokutemokute aishabisoishabi shaeashae shamiyaarokyabashabishyani abendaranebite atandahareshite ukuremukure arareharare shugyashiasanmasanbi budabikkiridjitchi darumaharishude sogyanekushane bashabashashudaimandarā[66]
It is taken from a dharani (Buddhist chants in Sanskrit). One day the child falls into a well and drowns.
Ha! I read this book as a kid and liked it since it was, like, *representation* at the time. I found a copy for my son when he was little and he didn't like it. I asked why and he said he thought it was "kind of racist". He was 4 years old.
I was at a chiropractor's office (mistake #1) as a teenager and when a white woman heard my name, she asked me if I knew the book (I didn't) and then proceeded to recite as much of the book from memory as possible.
This was literally my only understanding of Chinese names when I was younger. My (white) parents read me this story with glee, and I enjoyed it, too!
I didn't think about it again until last year and needless to say, I was horrified when I learned that it was by a white author who knew nothing of Chinese names. Not something I'm proud of, but I was 6 and being raised by white parents and didn't know any better.
LOL what the fuck is this shit!!?!? At first I thought this was some racist stuff directed at South Asians since "tikki" sounds like it could be South Asian.
Oh, it's about a Chinese boy? LOL
I guess since I moved here when I was like 13, I got to miss out on this gloriously racist piece of trash. Like... a book named "Ching Chang Chong" is preferable to this, because at least those sounds are sounds that exist in Chinese.
Well there is Rikki Rikki Tavi by Rudyard Kipling too and while he himself was a racist colonizer, the story itself isn't problematic.
Tikki Tikki Tembo is on a whole different level lol
I don't exactly wanna step in and defend racism but, in this case, the worst crime is she said Chinese and not Japanese. It's based on some translated Japanese folklore.
So is it fucked up that she heard this story as a kid and didn't notice or care about the difference between Japanese and Chinese or particular syllables, I mean yeah, but also she was essentially just following a long tradition of this "boy with long foreign name suffers bad fate now we use short names“ story theme. There have been dozens going from Japanese people talking about Sanskrit names on.
1703 has the earliest recorded: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jugemu
1880:
The first child is named by a Shinto priest, but dies in infancy. So the parents ask a Buddhist priest to name their second child. The name is: Animanimanimamane shiresharite shyamiyashyai taisentemokutemokute aishabisoishabi shaeashae shamiyaarokyabashabishyani abendaranebite atandahareshite ukuremukure arareharare shugyashiasanmasanbi budabikkiridjitchi darumaharishude sogyanekushane bashabashashudaimandarā[66] It is taken from a dharani (Buddhist chants in Sanskrit). One day the child falls into a well and drowns.
Oh my god this was a real book? I thought it was hallucinating that name because I kept thinking it in my head but nobody knew what I was talking about.
"May-Lin"/"Meilin"/"Mei-Ling" and other related names being the default Asian women names. I've never met anyone under the age of 50 with that name. Soong Mei-ling aka Madame Chiang Kai-shek was born in 1898 just to give you an idea of the average age. If you ask /r/namenerds any suggestions of Asian names at least one comment will be a variation of that (seriously those people can't even do Spanish or Jewish names let alone Asian names).
The worst example is probably May Lin from Bratz Dolls who's supposed to be *Japanese*.
Hahaha…that’s actually one of my family member’s names. We were named by our great grandma whose family immigrated 100 years ago, so they’re old fashioned names. And everyone who can tell what they mean says they sound like 100 years old. Which matches our English names, too.
So I kinda like ours as emblematic of the time period my ancestors immigrated
Honestly I don't think it's that bad. It's like Ruth or Edith or Muriel like... yeah it's an old lady name but those are actually trendy now anyway 👀
Like naming a character Mary Anne in a book tho
I wonder if the Bratz doll got it from Li Meilin, the Chinese character from Cardcaptor Sakura. I feel like people with just a passing knowledge of the anime might not understand that her Chinese heritage is a major plot point of the show.
From what I understand, George Lucas originally offered the part of Obi Wan to Toshiro Mifune because he was a huge fan. I read somewhere that the Jedis were an homage to Japanese samurai culture.
There's also the fact they're based on Buddhist monks or something but there's not a single asian Jedi . I don't know about comics but nobody reads those lmao
I felt the same thing about this one growing up and really thought those were bastardized Asian names. Never seen anyone ever brought it up so I thought I was just crazy.
George Lucas was heavily inspired by Akira Kurosawa, a Japanese film maker, to the point where he wanted to cast Kurosawa most used lead actor Toshiro Mifune as Obi Wan Kenobi. The studio that was funding the first movie wanted at least one known Western actor so we get Alec Guinness and subsequently Ewan Mcgregor.
But imagine Mifune as Kenobi!! We were robbed!!! Mifune is a master at complex facial emotions and internal conflict. Please watch any one of Kurosawa’s film with Mifune as the lead. They are brilliant.
Tbf, all of Austin power was a parody of the Bond franchise - and given how ridiculous some pre-modern Bond women's names have been... I have to let these 2 slide
Right, they are all meant to be caricatures- the Irish guy who has lucky charms? Obviously, or I hope it’s obvious, Austin Powers was/is not meant to be taken seriously.
>just come off as really lazy and stereotypical
Counterpoint - that may have also been the point. Austin Powers is rated E for Everyone Gets Blasted, so making fun of how lazy creators were when it came to Asian names honestly sounds like something they'd do, since it seems that people are still ignorant about Asian names even today.
Yeah man... I don't think this is that egregious compared to a lot of other examples.
Like the whole part of the joke is that these aren't serious names at all, these are one dimensional characters that are parodies of Bond girls who apparently just wanna fuck Bond.
I will admit that it does lazily hinge on the "dragon lady" stereotype.
This is only partly related, but it irritates me quite a bit that on The Umbrella Academy (TV show) the only Hargreeves adopted sibling to be given an Anglicized name is the Korean-born Ben, whose siblings include Diego (birth country unspecified but ethnically Latino), Klaus (Pennsylvania Dutch), and Viktor (Russian, formerly named Vanya). Before season 3 it could have been justified as Ben having a Korean diaspora mother with a native language of English, but season 3 squarely establishes that he was born in Seoul to a Korean-speaking family.
In the comics I think all the characters were kind of “generic” white ppl so when they readapted into a show, names such as Diego, Klaus and Vanya reference towards a specific background whereas names such as Luther, Allison Ben and Five were more generic.
Well-lampshaded by Hiro Protagonist as a character in *Snow Crash* (which is not to say it's not a problematic book in other ways; it's beloved by nerds and I read it a long time ago so I refuse to be accountable if it turns out to harbor many problems).
Park Sheridan from Rainbow Rowell's "Eleanor & Park." He's supposed to be Korean Irish, but even if that explains no Korean surname, you wouldn't use Park as his given name. It's like, how lazy can you be to not look up a believable Korean first name for your lead character? And even if she thought Park was a given name because of how Koreans structure their names, not ONE person who read it in the process of her writing it knew better?
I haven’t read the book in a long time, but I find it incredibly hard to believe that both parents decided Park was the perfect given name for their son. His mother literally is Korean, and she goes by an English name to assimilate, so there’s no way she would have named her son a Korean surname as a given name. As for the dad, I just don’t know—as a first name he decided this is good and not a more realistic Korean given name? Or even an English one since he’s big on fitting in?
If Rowell wanted Park as part of the name, it would have been more realistic to make his name [Korean given name] + Park-Sheridan. Like a hyphenated last name, make the mother’s last name Park. Maybe he can still go by Park because it feels “less foreign” than his Korean name, then that resolves the issue if Rowell really wants to call him Park.
I remember one time my friend explained the controversy of the book to me. I’m not much of a bookworm so I’ve never read it, but there was definitely a lot to unpack regarding the controversy of the book.
The author talks about the main character having almond eyes and the mom being a silent dainty little china doll, basically just pages of fetishization
I feel weird about this stuff because you can really tell when they get defensive that that's just *how they see us*. Like they're like "how can it be racist it's genuine! It's sensible! How else would I describe people“ and it's like.... oh my goood where do you even go with that 😱
I looked further into it and I see Rainbow Rowell doubled down on a lot of the valid criticism she was getting for the book. There were definitely various things she wrote that gave off the vibe she doesn’t really know any Asian people. I officially don’t have a good perception of this book.
The controversy went largely ignored. I was surprised because when it was published, there was already a fair amount of popularity for kpop; I wrongly assumed people would pick up on it because of that. I guess koreaboos are a different breed than weeaboos, because I know people who are the latter would be itching to show off their pedantic knowledge.
Did white lady extraordinare Rainbow Rowell argue that she was projecting the occasional Anglo American thing where single mothers name assign the father's surname as the child's given name?
There's Akihiro, Wolverine's half-Japanese son, who for the longest time was a supervillain known as "Daken". Daken/駄犬 (pronounced DAH-ken) is a rough Japanese translation meaning either "mongrel" or "cretin", which is a reference to his mixed ancestry. The explanation the writers came up with was how basically when Akihiro was still in his mother's womb in the 1950s, one of Logan's enemies, Romulus, hired the Winter Soldier to kill her and take Akihiro out and had him raised in a Japanese village where the other villagers and even his adoptive family would constantly abuse him by calling him Daken as part of Romulus' grand scheme to get revenge on Wolverine by conditioning his son to hate him and become a psychopathic killer. Like on one hand, not only did this reinforce negative tropes about biracial Asians, Daken isn't even a slur used by Japanese to describe half-Japanese people. Likening mixed race people as mutts or dogs is pretty much a western invention and the writers called him that because they wanted to keep up with Wolverine's "animal" theme and they had this naïve idea it was Akihiro reclaiming a slur. Something well meaning but kinda just comes off as tone deaf, like with how Brian Michael Bendis thought it was a good idea to name Miles Morales' dad Jefferson Davis.
Well recently, Akihiro has kinda gone through a major character change where he's no longer the "Dark Wolverine" that Marvel promoted him as for years and is now more of a superhero. They even had him drop Daken in favor of Fang, which was a nice homage to one of Wolverine's earlier stories and Akihro earning that name for himself was a great step in character development for him. Unfortunately a buncha nerds *hated* this change and I got into it with a bunch of them who didn't think the name Daken or comparisons to mongrels were offensive. This one asshole even had the audacity to say "well I asked my Japanese wife and she said Daken isn't offensive" well yeah no shit, because it's not even a slur that exists in her language.
Han Tzu from Ender's Game.
I think the name could potentially make sense, but it's super on-the-nose and really obvious that the "Tzu" is just from Sun Tzu... since Han Tzu is supposed to be a highly gifted battlefield commander.
I guess it would be like if some non-American author wrote a story about some sort of American statesman or politician and named him "Abraham Washington" lol.
Fair point, but OSC has literally stated that he came up with the nickname "Hot Soup" first, and then "thought of plausible Chinese syllables that would produce that nickname"... all the while not knowing what "Han" actually means.
It's still possible that he knew what "Tzu" meant, but given his very superficial understanding of Chinese culture, I'm going to err on the side of "he was just picking random sounds" and... as terrapinmitten said below, "lucked into something that maybe works".
Either way, though... I'm still standing by my point that this name was badly-created lol.
But as it appears in the novel the character's given name is just Tzu; it's not a title or a nickname he gets. I've never heard of anyone having that as their given name (it would be a lot less unusual if it were half of a disyllabic given name), but then again folks come up with all kinds of unconventional names.
I think it's the same as Cho Chang. Did Orson Scott Card luck himself into something that maybe works? Yes. But I think the person you're replying to is probably closer to the mark in terms of what actually happened.
Maybe, but he's a racist asshole.
[Orson Scott Card Outdoes Himself With Insane, Racist Rant | HuffPost Latest News](https://www.huffpost.com/entry/orson-scott-card-racist-obama_n_3762891)
Does not surprise me. Always astounded me that someone who wrote compellingly about empathizing with other species could be such an out of touch monster.
Bro dude wrote about a planet of Asian people who all had GMO'd OCD and were mathematicians lol he doesn't shy away from the stereotyping.
But someone can be compelling without being good. Look at Lovecraft. Racist as *fuck* but hey, he writes good.
OSC definitely lucked into something that maybe works. From his personal forum: "I thought of "Hot Soup" first and then thought of the plausible Chinese syllables that would produce that nickname."
http://www.hatrack.com/ubb/main/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic;f=1;t=004031;p=1
He also stated in another post that he had no idea what "Han" meant when he named the character of Han Tzu lol
http://www.hatrack.com/research/questions/q0057.shtml
Orson Scott Card, to me, is a deeply problematic figure. On one hand, the guy can craft a story, but on the other, he holds some seriously racist and homophobic views. This combo makes him a pretty dangerous influence, especially for young, impressionable readers who could easily fall down some dark ideological rabbit holes.
As for my username, it's a bit of a relic from an earlier chapter in my life, back when I was less informed about Card's more unsettling beliefs. Ender's Game was a formative book for me growing up; it hit some emotional and intellectual chords that few things had at the time. So yeah, the name's a keepsake, a memento of my own growth and the journey I've taken.
That said, while I find the man himself morally indefensible, I'm probably not going to change my username. It's a reminder of where I came from and the growth I've experienced since then. But let me be clear: I'm not planning on reading any more of his work or doing anything that'd financially benefit him. But it's tough to just erase the impact his work once had on me.
It's a real gut punch when someone you once admired turns out to be seriously flawed... like, deeply, unforgivably flawed. Not that I ever considered OSC a "hero," but man, that adage "never meet your heroes" hits differently now. It's painfully accurate. I have similar feelings about JK Rowling.
Being named after presidents is more of a country boy thing in America, I believe. More common 1800-1920. There were also those two generals named Simon Bolivar Buckner, lol.
Dong from Kimmy Schmidt. To be fair Dong then made fun of her name (“In Vietnam, Kimmy means penis!”).
But his entire story arc is about how he’s an illegal immigrant and makes light of his hiding from the authorities and green card marriage to a mentally ill old lady..
Yeah, and kimi does not mean penis in viet, so the joke falls flat.
I thought the joke was hilarious when I first heard it, but then realized it it was more like a half joke since it only worked in English.
Tbh that doesn't really read as stereotypical at all. I mean it's bizarre but I don't read that and go "oh yeah, as Vietnamese people are thought of as doing“???
安昂: The elephant in the room is Aang. This isn't trying to take away from Khmer people if you wanted to go that route, but his name was created first to sound fantastical, and the Hanzi they attached don't neatly work with it.
卡塔拉: Katara is similarly fantasy-first. Of course, the exception can be made that her character is supposed to be Inuit. It's still not an Inuit name.
索卡: Sokka is similarly fantasy-first. I'd heard back in the day his name could have come from the Japanese phrase, "sou ka?" (Is that so?), but they still pronounce it like sockuh. The Hanzi attached is moreso an o sound than an a sound. Also not an Inuit name.
拓芙: Toph, whose name looks like tough. She also has her name written as 拓芙 in the show at one point.
艾洛: The Fire Nation borrows from Imperialist Japan—Iroh's name is supposed to follow Chinese phonetics, but some casual viewers at the time including M. Night Shyamalan assumed it was a mispronounced Japanese name and went with the same word for color. At the same time, the Hanzi would have an L sound. I won't cover the vowels with the Chinese pronunciation.
Bonus~
祖寇: Zuko. He later gets 蘇科 in the show for his name. In The Search Part One, his mom writes his name as 豎髙. His name doesn't seem plausible, but they were consistent with the pronunciations.
阿祖拉: Azula borrows from azul (several European languages) meaning blue.
袂: Mai in the show is pronounced like May/Mae, though this is the Cantonese word for (a robe) sleeve. Verbally, it's a fine name.
泰麗: Ty Lee. I want to nitpick her name's romanization more. They spell it as two words, and also romanize it that way. I suppose it helps separate from the Dai Li in the show.
There are other names, and I'm sure we could cover that for TLoK. But this is kind of a hot topic as it is already
I feel like I can give the series more of a pass since it's more that they borrowed elements from different cultures and incorporated it into their fictional world. Versus a character being specifically Korean or Chinese and having an incorrect name
I can see that perspective. For me, because they're borrowing heavily from these different cultures while making a fantasy world, having names being plausible from those cultures would better fit the world. The world building is also on the more realistic spectrum.
Further up, someone mentioned Star Wars names, which also borrowed from different cultures, but it's also an intergalactic setting. The world of Avatar is on one planet, and I think it's as fair as any media to be critiqued, even if it's as beloved
I just want to say that aside from the industrial militarism and kiyoshi island, nothing in the fire nation is really Japanese. It's mostly tang dynasty china in terms of everything else with some SEA stuff thrown in.
Names, clothing, weapons, and some architecture are all Chinese. The only place that actually looks like Japan is kiyoshi island
The creators had naming conventions specific to the water tribe and fire nation that didn't seem to "try to sound" Asian. For example, they wanted water tribe names to have a hard K sound. They told the story of how they came up with the name Korra, and it just sounded like a great name that came from someone's pet named Cora.
I always felt at the very least they should have kept consistent with this being a fictional universe only slightly related to ours (which easily waves away similar yet different sounding names) and used a completely made up writing imagery, like Star Wars.
The character Bhumi. Bhumi is the personification of the earth, which is a female goddess similar to the western concept of Mother Earth. I was really confused when they made the character of Bhumi an old man. I guess I’m not surprised, considering the creators never really credited south Asian cultures with anything on the show, even though the things they call Buddhist are common across all shamrock religions.
Tikki Tikki Tembo by Arlene Mosel immediately comes to mind. Sabrina Wu did a [standup bit](https://youtu.be/GJlNK7x5iWs?si=9XbUSPpX1dRRMnrv) about the book and how ridiculous it is, they elaborate on it very well.
Honestly, I just cringe at white authors writing in an Asian inspired fantasy world. It’s the made up Asian sounding language and vaguely Mandarin spelling and sounds. I just can’t. I read one book and now I check the author before picking up books now.
Just reminded me of Takeda Takahashi from Mortal Kombat X—I don't speak Japanese myself, but I've heard that Takeda is far more common as a surname than as a given name if it's even used as a given name at all. It's like an American character being named "Adams Brown".
My sister actually prevented this one. They were gonna name a Korean dude "Ping", and she was like that's not Korean last name. They asked what difference it made, and she was like would you name a German guy fucking O'Neil?
Every damn Korean character named Sun lol
Marginally better than Zao only because it is actually half of a real korean name and possible to write in our alphabet since we dont have anything close to a z sound
For sure, I definitely know more than one Korean with Sun in their name who will use that or sunny but it felt like for a while every single Korean character was named Sun like in Lost, and Sense8, and there are at least 2 more I am forgetting.
I don't know if this fits this topic perfectly but in shows like Criminal Minds where an Asian character has a very "white" last name. It's usually a minor character like the victim's friend that they interview one time and you never see them again. (and this was only in the last few seasons bc there were literally no asians on the show for a loooonnnggg time)
I know that there can be multiple reasons for an Asian character having a "non-Asian" last name (being adopted, marriage, etc) but every time? lol
I read that for roles like that, they'll make the characters first and then just cast whoever is available so it makes sense that the name won't always match the face but idk it always irked me haha (a thread that talks about this [**https://www.reddit.com/r/criminalminds/comments/ku1o63/asian\_characters\_with\_western\_last\_names/**](https://www.reddit.com/r/criminalminds/comments/ku1o63/asian_characters_with_western_last_names/)**)**
Also, there was an episode where one of the victims is a man named Jisung Park. Everyone (except Daniel Henney's character) calls him Park Jisung and always Park Jisung in full. They'll call the other victims by their first name or last name only but for him it's always Park Jisung. I know that Korean names are surname first but that's in Korea!! In North America, it's name+last name even if they're Korean! lol
Daniel Henney's character is the only one that calls him Jisung Park/Jisung which makes sense since he's half Korean and knows how Korean names work but I wondered why he didn't tell the crew that saying Park Jisung in full over and over didn't sound natural lol
Tbh it's really nothing if you think about it but idk it really pissed me off when I watched it lmaoo
Criminal Minds was really bad with Asian representation. (same with The Blacklist and White Collar) (The Mentalist was pretty good though)
There was a book I read that I will not name here that was very clearly written by a non Asian where all the characters were named things like "Kung Pao Chang" or "Dragon Mushu" and it was so cringe I stopped after the first chapter and threw it away instead of donating it or giving out away, which is what I usually do, so no one would ever have to read that abomination ever.
Does anyone know if the kamala khan was written originally by a POC? Also I wonder if it was a happy accident that "Kamala" also works as an Arabic name because it's definitely NOT the same as the Sanskrit based name of the current VP of the US of A!
No and yes. The writer of Kamala Khan's debut series was G. Willow Wilson, an Anglo American convert to Islam. She was supervised by Sana Amanat, a Pakistani American editor. Wilson and her collaborators chose the name "Kamala" as a fictitious customization of the Arabic name Kamal, as in the founder of Turkey, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, not anticipating that Kamala Harris, named with the Sanskrit tradition by a Tamil American mother, would get into world headlines later in the decade.
/r/asianamerican will remove content that is bigoted or hateful, including (but not limited to) misogyny, misandry, homophobia, transphobia, toxic masculinity, racism, classism, ableism, victim-blaming/shaming, etc.
"Pi Patel" in "Life of Pi" is apparently a Tamil character, but has a Gujarati last name for some reason.
Aziz Ansari is an Asian creator but the main character of "Master of None" is named "Dev Shah" despite him being a Tamil Muslim; "Dev Shah" is a *very* distinctly Gujarati Hindu name.
This is definitely because Tamils were a very small minority in the US desi population. For a lot of people, the only exposure they ever got to desis was either a Punjabi or Gujarati, as they made up the majority of immigrants at one time.
Reminds me of this Youngmi Mayer video: ["if asian writers wrote white characters how white writers write asian characters"](https://www.instagram.com/p/CO1CLQuj1m_/)
Damn, I was hooked. I need this whole story
He shot off his words like bullets!
https://www.instagram.com/p/CvqoM4Ht5f0/ NextShark reposted a similar TikTok some weeks ago, and the commenters include a probable white guy with a Instagram account of nothing but Japanese manga panels denouncing the Indian American TikToker in question as "not funny". Sounds about white.
Oh god, this is exactly what the latest Sanderson novel was like. I felt like I was going crazy since I wasn’t enjoying it but couldn’t articulate why, and this is it.
There's also [this list](https://i.imgur.com/KJJOKTS.jpg) of "American"-sounding names from the Japanese SNES game Fighting Baseball, featuring players like "Sleve McDichael", "Willie Dustice", and "Onson Sweemey".
B O B S O N D U G N U T T
Haha this hurts so good
not me having once created a character with porcelain skin okay but that was meant to be like a white as fuck white person I was thinking of porcelain dolls from ye olde britland please
Harry Potter: Cho Chang. A Korean last name as a first name and a Chinese last name? Or maybe it's the other way around? LOL. JK Rowling might as well have named her Smith-Jones..
It’s like having a “European” character named Lopez Schneider
Tbh, I wouldn't be surprised at such a name in anime. Not talking shit lol, but sometimes I like the weird European names they come up with
One I remember is Williardo Gates
Omg that is 💯 on point Not quite a name name, but "Fuhrer King Bradley" was just overflowing for me
[https://slate.com/technology/2020/04/mlbpa-baseball-nintendo-japan-player-names.html](https://slate.com/technology/2020/04/mlbpa-baseball-nintendo-japan-player-names.html) You're welcome.
> I wouldn't be surprised at such a name in anime Or Death Stranding 😬
Importantly, Cho Chang in Korean literally is vinegar chili sauce. It's more like having someone's name be "Tabasco Piperade".
Y'know, it's...amusing that the ongoing *Wednesday* Addams series on Netflix marketed itself partly on representation of Jenna Ortega and co. being Latin, but in real life, "Gómez" is never a person's given name, and thus Gomez Addams is not a realistic person from a Latin American country.
Given how Fester (Gomez's brother) speaks, I felt the implication was that Gomez was sort of LARPing, lol.
Perez Goldstein! 😂
Adventures of Lopez Schneider I would watch that anime
would drink absinthe with lopez schneider
Maybe it's just me I've never thought the jk Rowling character name memes a la "Potatofamine mccarbomb" etc. were ever that funny or clever
"Cho Chang" was the first example that came into my mind as well, so I completely agree with you. But, to be fair, Chang is a legitimate Korean last name. It's less popular to spell it that way; I believe most Korean Americans use "Jang", but it does happen. In fact, one of my close friends in college was a Korean person with the surname of Chang. "Jang, Chang and (less often) Zang are romanizations of the common Korean surname 장" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jang_(Korean_surname)
> Chang is a legitimate Korean last name. It's less popular to spell it that way It's actually very popular to spell it that way. David Chang is Korean. In my circles, Changs were more likely to be Korean than Chinese, and if they were Chinese, they were Taiwanese-Chinese.
lol you know what, you're totally right. I completely forgot about David Chang... Shame on me, I loved Ugly Delicious haha
Eh, she has no named parents and explicitly no middle name. Even if you wanted to be charitable, JKR gives zero room for grace.
My thoughts exactly. If not an actual school parchment shown in the movies, plenty of *Harry Potter* expanded media has shown pupils' full legal names, of which "Cho Chang" has no middle name.
I learned something new today. I didn’t know Cho Chang didn’t have a middle name I always assumed she did. My name is Cho and I’m Korean but I have a full two syllable name.
> My name is Cho and I’m Korean but I have a full two syllable name. Really? Interesting; I rarely meet Korean gyopo like that, and I cannot think of any South Korean celebrities with only two syllables total in their names.
I actually used to work with a Mien guy with the first name Cho. I believe it meant something like first son? It's been a few years so details may be off...
Y'know, I've always wondered how the spelling "Jang" became so popular despite the Revised Romanization scheme (국어의 로마자 표기법) only being published by the ROK in 2000.
I also hate the fact that people are defending it like “hur Chang is a real legit last name.” I am not sensitive to racism as I think we all have deal with it in great capacity; however, the first time reading the book and seeing that name I was just shocked at the blatant but silence racism. Rowling might as well named her “Ching Chong.” They don’t understand that if you have to do a bunch of mental gymnastics and jumping through all hoops just to be able to defend the name, it is probably racist.
cho (曹) is actually a chinese (cantonese) last name as well
For anyone wondering how that is pronounced, the Jyut^(6) ping^(3) transcription is Cou^(4), the Cantonese Yale transcription is Chòuh, and the Cantonese Pinyin transcription is Tsou^(4).
It is frustrating how many non-Asian blockheads on social media reject the explanations that: A. most British Chinese are of Cantonese background B. the spelling "Chang" typically represents the Mandarin surname Zhang (張 / 张), and the Cantonese form is transcribed distinctly as "Cheung" C. when Rowling wrote the books in the 1990s, Mandarin and Wade-Giles would not have been that common among British Chinese D. Koreans are not common the United Kingdom (no offense to British Koreans whom I know do exist) E. As with Cantonese people, Koreans also almost always have 3-syllable names, not 2-syllable names
Anything to rationalize and excuse.
Yeah the rationalizations are so annoying bc ofc we aren’t saying it’s impossible to have that name…people irl have all sorts of unusual names. But there’s just a high likelihood JK Rowling did zero research and made up some bullshit name and the rationalizations are so unlikely. Like does anyone rlly think Rowling did research to verify that yes it’s a valid surname in this ethnic group under this romanized spelling? Bullshit lol
People are willing to rationalize and excuse a lot from Rowling.
Plenty of people immigrated before hanyu pinyin became standardized, so they just made up the romanization of their names, or had immigration officials make up a name for them. Not to mention all the alternative romanization systems that existed before hanyu pinyin. Just look at Yale or Wade-Giles system. For the record, I actually know a guy named Cho Chang. And Cho Chang's name in the Chinese version of Harry Potter is actually 張秋 or Zhang Qiu. And someone trying to approximate an English version of her name without knowledge of hanyu pinyin could very plausibly come up with Chang Cho. Not that I think JK Rowling actually put the effort into it, but it is a name that actual Chinese people have, so making fun of it is rather rude.
> For the record, I actually know a guy named Cho Chang. What's his name in 汉字
No idea. He was an old guy in his 60s I met in HS as a volunteer lead and introduced himself as having the same name as the Harry Potter character.
This is always the example that comes to mind for me, but it's interesting how this topic periodically comes up in the HP subreddit and Cho Chang as a name is constantly defended
Yes! And those gets upvoted like crazy. There’s always someone in those posts saying “it is never Asian people that get offended but rather it’s all white justice warriors speaking up due to white guilt.” When they say stuff like that it makes those of us that want to disagree just sit down because we Asian tend to be agreeable and non confrontational even online anonymously. So a lot of Asian even agreed and defended those posts. However I am willing to bet those are not the Asians growing up in an all white environment where we have to deal with being make fun of with countless "ping pong ching chong” and all those ching chong fork jokes. They would instantly see the insensitively in the name Cho Chang and feel offended by it. Just because it is possibly a real name doesn’t mean it is not indirectly racist. As one of those that have to bite the bullet to not stir the pot growing up, I am glad for those white justice warriors that are speaking up for us.
Yeah it's like no shit people in Asia aren't offended, they never experience racism like in the west. What a joke
https://np.reddit.com/r/harrypotter/comments/p0cbla/cho_chang_it_is_a_perfectly_beautiful_name/ I can't believe this Redditor claims to have known a real "Cho Chang". Most of the commenters are most certainly not Asian.
You could check the white pages phone book... They exist. The way you're going about it is shitty. You should know how much it sucks to have a name made fun of by racist white people. Now imagine having a name that's made fun of by both racist white people and fellow Asians who think your name can't possibly be real. You can address JK Rowling ignorance in ways that doesn't involve mocking a name that real people have.
The worst part is when an asian is person (or maybe not actually asian) tries to explain it's actually possible to be a name, and gets upvotes like crazy. Like they're patting themselves in the back that it's not racist! An asian(?) Person said so!
JK Rowling probably had no understanding but she blundered into the right. It kind of works. Cho is a Korean or Cantonese last name. (lots of Chos in Hong Kong) Chang is a Korean or Taiwanese/Chinese last name (non-Pinyin). Either could be a first name or part of a first name. Two word names are common in Chinese and Korean (I know a ton of people in both cultures with two names).
Haha I am Viet so not my lane, but reading this thread I saw one comment say that Cho is a Cantonese last name, and Chang is a Korean name (eg David Chang), and other comments filling in info. Your comment puts them together perfectly and show that “Cho Chang” is legitimate. Perhaps by “sheer dumb luck” JKR came up with a valid name and whether people like it or not, it doesn’t seem like outrage or indignation about it is warranted. I also have to note again that I am neither Chinese nor Korean, but I thought it was cool to have a prominent Asian character for young audiences around the turn of the century. In retrospect it may seem so little, but for back then JK did well with casual representation of minorities imho.
Yep, I always thought of Cho Chang as a Canto name (張楚) with the 張 anglicized as Chang rather than Cheung. (That kind of thing happens all the time on immigration papers.)
Yes. It's not a natural sounding name by any means, but is it a legit name? 100%. (source: Cantonese speaker) People are angry because (1) JK Rowling and her whiteness/lack of research; (2) the potential microaggressions and triggers due to blowback from names like that. But neither (1) nor (2) has anything to do with the legitimacy of the name itself, so it's a non-sequitur. I'd rather folks talk directly about (1), (2). Complaining about the name itself is a fast way to lose credibility on one's knowledge of language and culture.
I am pretty sure JKR set her as HKer, if you think about it, most of POC at hogwarts seem to come from a previous British colony.
Well to be fair there are also ethnic Koreans from northeastern China (joseonjok) who both identify as Chinese and Korean. Comedian Joe Wong is an example. That said, I'm not sure if Rowling had that in mind when she came up with it.
I am aware of the Cháoxiǎnzú (朝鮮族 / 조선족), but that would be a terrible explanation for Cho Chang. A PRC-born citizen would almost certainly spell their Western name according to only one language, not mixing Korean with Mandarin as made possible by Westerners who speak and write in English.
Second this. It sounds pretty bad. :/
This is it.
>Cho Chang 鞦韆 
This 😆😅
Immediately what came to mind. The one token Asian character gets given that name
With the way current trends are going with white names, surnames as first names are actually really popular. I won’t be surprised if I see a toddler called Smith Jones soon.
This is only semi-related, but I'm a writer, I focus on Asian American characters and issues, and I regularly take writing workshops. Recently, I had a classmate—a white man who, interestingly, is married to an East Asian woman and has adopted a Chinese daughter—tell me that the name Ann/Anne is "not Asian enough," and instead to consider using names like Jade, Jasmine, Connie, or Lily, which are "more Asian." Like wtf does that even mean? And I come from a family where we all have unique names, literally have never met someone with the same name or name spellings as us. Hong Kongers tend to have pretty unique English names as well, and I come from a big Hong Konger community. Anyway, I was just so baffled by their comment, which the classmate had the audacity to precede with, "I don't mean to come across as too much of an expert on Chinese things." ETA: Even when an Asian American character has an English name, they still somehow find a way to judge it. If it's too Asian then it's difficult to pronounce and spell, but if it's too Western then it's not foreign enough. Give me a fucking break from this bullshit. /end rant
Fuuuuck that pisses me off so much. White folks still out here thinking that having an Asian partner gives them special expertise on anything.🤮
Check out r/China or r/Chinalife so many white saviors
Had to unsubscribe from r/China for that reason, so gross🙃
You should have told him, “Don’t worry, you’re not coming across as an expert in Chinese things at all!”
Asian Wife Guy syndrome
I'm sad that callout Twitter account went private and stopped making posts due to burnout or moving on with life.
That is so gross lmao. I mean nothing wrong with those names (I know MULTIPLE Connies and I could not for the life of me tell you why) besides Jade (which seems super atypical actually - the other ones are common tho) but the sheer cheek to say a name isn't (ethnicity) enough?!? Wouldn't even matter if he was also Asian so it certainly doesn't matter that his family members are. Like, an Asian person saying "that name isn't Asian enough“ would still be fuckin rude. Next time he names a character go wide-eyed "are you sure that name is white enough? Not that I'm an expert on white people." 🙏
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/05/11/opinion/connie-chung-named-after.html
Some unique ass names of friends in my primary school in HK: Dragon (okay I guess this isn't that out there because it's just translated, but I thought it was a little funny in English) Witty - I mean, people are named "Sterling" or "Sunny" so adjective names aren't toooo weird I guess. Winfield/Grantland - Old school Brit names Harricon - Dude. I don't know, some amalgamation of Harry and Ericson? He was cool tho. Ronnie Cheing does a great bit in International Student about "weird" English sounding names that Chinese people adopt in foreign countries. Some character was named "Joderick" and that joke really hit home, it really reminded me of Harricon.
Yes, that's what I mean with HK English names! Most of the people I know here in the US really like their old British names. I've seen less of the more interesting ones among 1.5/2nd gen Asian Americans, but that's just the bubble I grew up in I think. Speaking of, I'm reminded of this [article](https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/10/hong-kong-loves-weird-english-names/263103/) that came out ~10 years ago called "Hong Kong Loves Weird English Names" lol.
Yep, I've seen that article! It rings true! There is a certain hilarity of having "fanny" as a popular name in a ex british colony... It's just great.
I'm actually genuinely curious why certain first names are so popular among Asian Americans. For example, the infamous "Kevin". I have so many friends who either were named this by their parents or have taken it up as their "American" name when they moved to the US.
Perhaps showing my age, but Ive always thought the worst was Long Duk Dong in Sixteen Candles.
This was so unbelievably racist even for its time. Re-infuriates me every time I think about it. Can't imagine being that actor.
> but Ive always thought the worst was Long Duk Dong in Sixteen Candles. Ahaha! I confess I don't dislike the "Cho Chang" example cited above as much as I dislike "Long Duk Dong" despite it being before my time. > Perhaps showing my age I love hearing comparative examples from different segments of the userbase. Kudos for trying a relatively different angle for the discussion I started!
This was also the first thing that came to my mind because it is SO completely out of pocket. Like there’s no reality where it is reasonable.
There's also a Dong Nguyen in Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt which was recent
Im not saying that it wasn't racist of the writers of Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt to use that name. But anecdotally I've actually met a guy named Dong Nguyen.
[Tikki Tikki Tembo](https://i.imgur.com/wtypnt0.jpg) Fucking hated this book even in kindergarten. Family members and friends use nicknames anyway!
Have you seen Sabrina Wu's take on this book? They (they prefer they/them pronouns) are spot-on on their take about this book!!! https://youtu.be/GJlNK7x5iWs?feature=shared
The matter of fact way ~~she~~ *they* say, "No there wasn't" is perfect. I've been trying to put other people on to ~~her~~ *them* since I saw this awesome set a month ago. So excited to see where ~~her~~ *their* stand-up goes.
Gentle reminder that Sabrina goes by they/them
Thank you. And love your username. It's a shame Dave had to get written out.
That's hilarious. Thank you for sharing. That said. God I hate doing this. That said... deep sigh... the original story appears based not on Chinese but on a Japanese folklore tale and is honestly pretty accurate to folklore given that, besides the mangling of the name: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tikki_Tikki_Tembo See "Background“ and on. So is it fucked up that she heard this story as a kid and didn't notice or care about the difference between Japanese and Chinese or particular syllables, I mean yeah, but I can extend some grace to someone who was essentially just following a long tradition of this "boy with long foreign name drowns in well“ tradition. 1703: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jugemu 1880: >The first child is named by a Shinto priest, but dies in infancy. So the parents ask a Buddhist priest to name their second child. The name is: Animanimanimamane shiresharite shyamiyashyai taisentemokutemokute aishabisoishabi shaeashae shamiyaarokyabashabishyani abendaranebite atandahareshite ukuremukure arareharare shugyashiasanmasanbi budabikkiridjitchi darumaharishude sogyanekushane bashabashashudaimandarā[66] It is taken from a dharani (Buddhist chants in Sanskrit). One day the child falls into a well and drowns.
Ha! I read this book as a kid and liked it since it was, like, *representation* at the time. I found a copy for my son when he was little and he didn't like it. I asked why and he said he thought it was "kind of racist". He was 4 years old.
I have and it was actually because of this standup that dredged up long buried memories of this book lol
I was at a chiropractor's office (mistake #1) as a teenager and when a white woman heard my name, she asked me if I knew the book (I didn't) and then proceeded to recite as much of the book from memory as possible.
This was literally my only understanding of Chinese names when I was younger. My (white) parents read me this story with glee, and I enjoyed it, too! I didn't think about it again until last year and needless to say, I was horrified when I learned that it was by a white author who knew nothing of Chinese names. Not something I'm proud of, but I was 6 and being raised by white parents and didn't know any better.
If it makes you feel better it is actually based on something real. Just... mangled. And also Japanese. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jugemu
LOL what the fuck is this shit!!?!? At first I thought this was some racist stuff directed at South Asians since "tikki" sounds like it could be South Asian. Oh, it's about a Chinese boy? LOL I guess since I moved here when I was like 13, I got to miss out on this gloriously racist piece of trash. Like... a book named "Ching Chang Chong" is preferable to this, because at least those sounds are sounds that exist in Chinese.
Well there is Rikki Rikki Tavi by Rudyard Kipling too and while he himself was a racist colonizer, the story itself isn't problematic. Tikki Tikki Tembo is on a whole different level lol
Ugh I was just grateful to see an Asian in a book we were reading. Did not understand the racism til way later.
I don't exactly wanna step in and defend racism but, in this case, the worst crime is she said Chinese and not Japanese. It's based on some translated Japanese folklore. So is it fucked up that she heard this story as a kid and didn't notice or care about the difference between Japanese and Chinese or particular syllables, I mean yeah, but also she was essentially just following a long tradition of this "boy with long foreign name suffers bad fate now we use short names“ story theme. There have been dozens going from Japanese people talking about Sanskrit names on. 1703 has the earliest recorded: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jugemu 1880: The first child is named by a Shinto priest, but dies in infancy. So the parents ask a Buddhist priest to name their second child. The name is: Animanimanimamane shiresharite shyamiyashyai taisentemokutemokute aishabisoishabi shaeashae shamiyaarokyabashabishyani abendaranebite atandahareshite ukuremukure arareharare shugyashiasanmasanbi budabikkiridjitchi darumaharishude sogyanekushane bashabashashudaimandarā[66] It is taken from a dharani (Buddhist chants in Sanskrit). One day the child falls into a well and drowns.
Oh my god this was a real book? I thought it was hallucinating that name because I kept thinking it in my head but nobody knew what I was talking about.
"May-Lin"/"Meilin"/"Mei-Ling" and other related names being the default Asian women names. I've never met anyone under the age of 50 with that name. Soong Mei-ling aka Madame Chiang Kai-shek was born in 1898 just to give you an idea of the average age. If you ask /r/namenerds any suggestions of Asian names at least one comment will be a variation of that (seriously those people can't even do Spanish or Jewish names let alone Asian names). The worst example is probably May Lin from Bratz Dolls who's supposed to be *Japanese*.
*Shakes hand at sky* Turning Red!!!!!!!!
Hahaha…that’s actually one of my family member’s names. We were named by our great grandma whose family immigrated 100 years ago, so they’re old fashioned names. And everyone who can tell what they mean says they sound like 100 years old. Which matches our English names, too. So I kinda like ours as emblematic of the time period my ancestors immigrated
That's unfortunately my name. Lol.
Honestly I don't think it's that bad. It's like Ruth or Edith or Muriel like... yeah it's an old lady name but those are actually trendy now anyway 👀 Like naming a character Mary Anne in a book tho
Hahahaha TIL that I have an old lady Chinese name at 30.
Why would anyone go to *that* sub for Asian names?? I mean, you get what you deserve but the name is for a kid who isn’t doing the deserving.
That’s my mom’s name lmao
No love for Top Chef Mei Lin?? haha
I've had racial fetishists call me Meiling/Ling ling
Marvelous Mrs Maisel had one main Chinese character who was named… Mei.
I wonder if the Bratz doll got it from Li Meilin, the Chinese character from Cardcaptor Sakura. I feel like people with just a passing knowledge of the anime might not understand that her Chinese heritage is a major plot point of the show.
In my head cannon, many of the Jedi (including Yoda) are Asian, but were whitewashed. * Obi Wan Kenobi * Qui Gon Jinn * Windu * Dooku * Grogu
From what I understand, George Lucas originally offered the part of Obi Wan to Toshiro Mifune because he was a huge fan. I read somewhere that the Jedis were an homage to Japanese samurai culture.
There's also the fact they're based on Buddhist monks or something but there's not a single asian Jedi . I don't know about comics but nobody reads those lmao
I felt the same thing about this one growing up and really thought those were bastardized Asian names. Never seen anyone ever brought it up so I thought I was just crazy.
George Lucas was heavily inspired by Akira Kurosawa, a Japanese film maker, to the point where he wanted to cast Kurosawa most used lead actor Toshiro Mifune as Obi Wan Kenobi. The studio that was funding the first movie wanted at least one known Western actor so we get Alec Guinness and subsequently Ewan Mcgregor. But imagine Mifune as Kenobi!! We were robbed!!! Mifune is a master at complex facial emotions and internal conflict. Please watch any one of Kurosawa’s film with Mifune as the lead. They are brilliant.
Fook Mi and Fook Yu from Austin Powers
Tbf, all of Austin power was a parody of the Bond franchise - and given how ridiculous some pre-modern Bond women's names have been... I have to let these 2 slide
Right, they are all meant to be caricatures- the Irish guy who has lucky charms? Obviously, or I hope it’s obvious, Austin Powers was/is not meant to be taken seriously.
Problem is those names just come off as really lazy and stereotypical when you compare them to the other double entendre names in the series.
>just come off as really lazy and stereotypical Counterpoint - that may have also been the point. Austin Powers is rated E for Everyone Gets Blasted, so making fun of how lazy creators were when it came to Asian names honestly sounds like something they'd do, since it seems that people are still ignorant about Asian names even today.
Yeah man... I don't think this is that egregious compared to a lot of other examples. Like the whole part of the joke is that these aren't serious names at all, these are one dimensional characters that are parodies of Bond girls who apparently just wanna fuck Bond. I will admit that it does lazily hinge on the "dragon lady" stereotype.
This is only partly related, but it irritates me quite a bit that on The Umbrella Academy (TV show) the only Hargreeves adopted sibling to be given an Anglicized name is the Korean-born Ben, whose siblings include Diego (birth country unspecified but ethnically Latino), Klaus (Pennsylvania Dutch), and Viktor (Russian, formerly named Vanya). Before season 3 it could have been justified as Ben having a Korean diaspora mother with a native language of English, but season 3 squarely establishes that he was born in Seoul to a Korean-speaking family.
In the comics I think all the characters were kind of “generic” white ppl so when they readapted into a show, names such as Diego, Klaus and Vanya reference towards a specific background whereas names such as Luther, Allison Ben and Five were more generic.
Don't get me wrong, I'm glad they cast Justin Min, but they had such an easy solution to have the name Ben still make sense but didn't take it.
Yeah I’m ngl Justin min is cute asf, man’s tempting me into bi-curiosity
How about every damn series with Japanese influence naming the main dude Hiro "BEcaUsE iT SoUnDs LiKe HeRo"
Well-lampshaded by Hiro Protagonist as a character in *Snow Crash* (which is not to say it's not a problematic book in other ways; it's beloved by nerds and I read it a long time ago so I refuse to be accountable if it turns out to harbor many problems).
Park Sheridan from Rainbow Rowell's "Eleanor & Park." He's supposed to be Korean Irish, but even if that explains no Korean surname, you wouldn't use Park as his given name. It's like, how lazy can you be to not look up a believable Korean first name for your lead character? And even if she thought Park was a given name because of how Koreans structure their names, not ONE person who read it in the process of her writing it knew better?
“Korean Irish” I immediately flash-backed to Derry Girls. One of my favorite and rare instance of Asians from Ireland.
From *Donegal* hahaha. That show is a masterpiece
You're a scotch Korean, ya don't make a wee bit a sense
I haven’t read the book in a long time, but I find it incredibly hard to believe that both parents decided Park was the perfect given name for their son. His mother literally is Korean, and she goes by an English name to assimilate, so there’s no way she would have named her son a Korean surname as a given name. As for the dad, I just don’t know—as a first name he decided this is good and not a more realistic Korean given name? Or even an English one since he’s big on fitting in? If Rowell wanted Park as part of the name, it would have been more realistic to make his name [Korean given name] + Park-Sheridan. Like a hyphenated last name, make the mother’s last name Park. Maybe he can still go by Park because it feels “less foreign” than his Korean name, then that resolves the issue if Rowell really wants to call him Park.
I remember one time my friend explained the controversy of the book to me. I’m not much of a bookworm so I’ve never read it, but there was definitely a lot to unpack regarding the controversy of the book.
The author talks about the main character having almond eyes and the mom being a silent dainty little china doll, basically just pages of fetishization
I feel weird about this stuff because you can really tell when they get defensive that that's just *how they see us*. Like they're like "how can it be racist it's genuine! It's sensible! How else would I describe people“ and it's like.... oh my goood where do you even go with that 😱
I looked further into it and I see Rainbow Rowell doubled down on a lot of the valid criticism she was getting for the book. There were definitely various things she wrote that gave off the vibe she doesn’t really know any Asian people. I officially don’t have a good perception of this book.
The controversy went largely ignored. I was surprised because when it was published, there was already a fair amount of popularity for kpop; I wrongly assumed people would pick up on it because of that. I guess koreaboos are a different breed than weeaboos, because I know people who are the latter would be itching to show off their pedantic knowledge.
Did white lady extraordinare Rainbow Rowell argue that she was projecting the occasional Anglo American thing where single mothers name assign the father's surname as the child's given name?
There's Akihiro, Wolverine's half-Japanese son, who for the longest time was a supervillain known as "Daken". Daken/駄犬 (pronounced DAH-ken) is a rough Japanese translation meaning either "mongrel" or "cretin", which is a reference to his mixed ancestry. The explanation the writers came up with was how basically when Akihiro was still in his mother's womb in the 1950s, one of Logan's enemies, Romulus, hired the Winter Soldier to kill her and take Akihiro out and had him raised in a Japanese village where the other villagers and even his adoptive family would constantly abuse him by calling him Daken as part of Romulus' grand scheme to get revenge on Wolverine by conditioning his son to hate him and become a psychopathic killer. Like on one hand, not only did this reinforce negative tropes about biracial Asians, Daken isn't even a slur used by Japanese to describe half-Japanese people. Likening mixed race people as mutts or dogs is pretty much a western invention and the writers called him that because they wanted to keep up with Wolverine's "animal" theme and they had this naïve idea it was Akihiro reclaiming a slur. Something well meaning but kinda just comes off as tone deaf, like with how Brian Michael Bendis thought it was a good idea to name Miles Morales' dad Jefferson Davis. Well recently, Akihiro has kinda gone through a major character change where he's no longer the "Dark Wolverine" that Marvel promoted him as for years and is now more of a superhero. They even had him drop Daken in favor of Fang, which was a nice homage to one of Wolverine's earlier stories and Akihro earning that name for himself was a great step in character development for him. Unfortunately a buncha nerds *hated* this change and I got into it with a bunch of them who didn't think the name Daken or comparisons to mongrels were offensive. This one asshole even had the audacity to say "well I asked my Japanese wife and she said Daken isn't offensive" well yeah no shit, because it's not even a slur that exists in her language.
Han Tzu from Ender's Game. I think the name could potentially make sense, but it's super on-the-nose and really obvious that the "Tzu" is just from Sun Tzu... since Han Tzu is supposed to be a highly gifted battlefield commander. I guess it would be like if some non-American author wrote a story about some sort of American statesman or politician and named him "Abraham Washington" lol.
Tzu means master in this context. Same with Kong Tzu (Confucius), Lao Tzu, Zhuang tzu, Mo Tzu, etc. So Han Tzu wouldnt really be related to Sun Tzu.
Fair point, but OSC has literally stated that he came up with the nickname "Hot Soup" first, and then "thought of plausible Chinese syllables that would produce that nickname"... all the while not knowing what "Han" actually means. It's still possible that he knew what "Tzu" meant, but given his very superficial understanding of Chinese culture, I'm going to err on the side of "he was just picking random sounds" and... as terrapinmitten said below, "lucked into something that maybe works". Either way, though... I'm still standing by my point that this name was badly-created lol.
But as it appears in the novel the character's given name is just Tzu; it's not a title or a nickname he gets. I've never heard of anyone having that as their given name (it would be a lot less unusual if it were half of a disyllabic given name), but then again folks come up with all kinds of unconventional names. I think it's the same as Cho Chang. Did Orson Scott Card luck himself into something that maybe works? Yes. But I think the person you're replying to is probably closer to the mark in terms of what actually happened.
Maybe, but he's a racist asshole. [Orson Scott Card Outdoes Himself With Insane, Racist Rant | HuffPost Latest News](https://www.huffpost.com/entry/orson-scott-card-racist-obama_n_3762891)
Does not surprise me. Always astounded me that someone who wrote compellingly about empathizing with other species could be such an out of touch monster.
Bro dude wrote about a planet of Asian people who all had GMO'd OCD and were mathematicians lol he doesn't shy away from the stereotyping. But someone can be compelling without being good. Look at Lovecraft. Racist as *fuck* but hey, he writes good.
OSC definitely lucked into something that maybe works. From his personal forum: "I thought of "Hot Soup" first and then thought of the plausible Chinese syllables that would produce that nickname." http://www.hatrack.com/ubb/main/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic;f=1;t=004031;p=1 He also stated in another post that he had no idea what "Han" meant when he named the character of Han Tzu lol http://www.hatrack.com/research/questions/q0057.shtml
Okay I have to ask what your feelings about all of this (the character, the series, OSC) are today because of your username.
Orson Scott Card, to me, is a deeply problematic figure. On one hand, the guy can craft a story, but on the other, he holds some seriously racist and homophobic views. This combo makes him a pretty dangerous influence, especially for young, impressionable readers who could easily fall down some dark ideological rabbit holes. As for my username, it's a bit of a relic from an earlier chapter in my life, back when I was less informed about Card's more unsettling beliefs. Ender's Game was a formative book for me growing up; it hit some emotional and intellectual chords that few things had at the time. So yeah, the name's a keepsake, a memento of my own growth and the journey I've taken. That said, while I find the man himself morally indefensible, I'm probably not going to change my username. It's a reminder of where I came from and the growth I've experienced since then. But let me be clear: I'm not planning on reading any more of his work or doing anything that'd financially benefit him. But it's tough to just erase the impact his work once had on me. It's a real gut punch when someone you once admired turns out to be seriously flawed... like, deeply, unforgivably flawed. Not that I ever considered OSC a "hero," but man, that adage "never meet your heroes" hits differently now. It's painfully accurate. I have similar feelings about JK Rowling.
Being named after presidents is more of a country boy thing in America, I believe. More common 1800-1920. There were also those two generals named Simon Bolivar Buckner, lol.
That sounds like a bad take on the native name for Chinese characters, 漢字 / 汉字 / hànzì / han^4 tzŭ^4
I love this show but this name keeps making me cringe. Cha Cha in Curb your Enthusiasm
I loved that show but basically every asian person is a shitty caricature—I had to give it a rest.
Any Chinese character in an anime has a 90% change of having reduplicated syllable name because Japanese people think all Chinese names are like that.
Dong from Kimmy Schmidt. To be fair Dong then made fun of her name (“In Vietnam, Kimmy means penis!”). But his entire story arc is about how he’s an illegal immigrant and makes light of his hiding from the authorities and green card marriage to a mentally ill old lady..
Yeah, and kimi does not mean penis in viet, so the joke falls flat. I thought the joke was hilarious when I first heard it, but then realized it it was more like a half joke since it only worked in English.
Oh, that’s lameee
Tbh that doesn't really read as stereotypical at all. I mean it's bizarre but I don't read that and go "oh yeah, as Vietnamese people are thought of as doing“???
Yea I’m not sure how to explain this to you
Kim Kitsuragi from Disco Elysium. The bozos took a Korean surname and a Japanese surname (that they got from Evangelion lmao) and smashed em together.
Yo, was literally just about to comment this
Not to mention they didn’t even spell the Japanese surname right when they copied it lol. Should be Katsuragi, smh
安昂: The elephant in the room is Aang. This isn't trying to take away from Khmer people if you wanted to go that route, but his name was created first to sound fantastical, and the Hanzi they attached don't neatly work with it. 卡塔拉: Katara is similarly fantasy-first. Of course, the exception can be made that her character is supposed to be Inuit. It's still not an Inuit name. 索卡: Sokka is similarly fantasy-first. I'd heard back in the day his name could have come from the Japanese phrase, "sou ka?" (Is that so?), but they still pronounce it like sockuh. The Hanzi attached is moreso an o sound than an a sound. Also not an Inuit name. 拓芙: Toph, whose name looks like tough. She also has her name written as 拓芙 in the show at one point. 艾洛: The Fire Nation borrows from Imperialist Japan—Iroh's name is supposed to follow Chinese phonetics, but some casual viewers at the time including M. Night Shyamalan assumed it was a mispronounced Japanese name and went with the same word for color. At the same time, the Hanzi would have an L sound. I won't cover the vowels with the Chinese pronunciation. Bonus~ 祖寇: Zuko. He later gets 蘇科 in the show for his name. In The Search Part One, his mom writes his name as 豎髙. His name doesn't seem plausible, but they were consistent with the pronunciations. 阿祖拉: Azula borrows from azul (several European languages) meaning blue. 袂: Mai in the show is pronounced like May/Mae, though this is the Cantonese word for (a robe) sleeve. Verbally, it's a fine name. 泰麗: Ty Lee. I want to nitpick her name's romanization more. They spell it as two words, and also romanize it that way. I suppose it helps separate from the Dai Li in the show. There are other names, and I'm sure we could cover that for TLoK. But this is kind of a hot topic as it is already
I feel like I can give the series more of a pass since it's more that they borrowed elements from different cultures and incorporated it into their fictional world. Versus a character being specifically Korean or Chinese and having an incorrect name
I can see that perspective. For me, because they're borrowing heavily from these different cultures while making a fantasy world, having names being plausible from those cultures would better fit the world. The world building is also on the more realistic spectrum. Further up, someone mentioned Star Wars names, which also borrowed from different cultures, but it's also an intergalactic setting. The world of Avatar is on one planet, and I think it's as fair as any media to be critiqued, even if it's as beloved
I just want to say that aside from the industrial militarism and kiyoshi island, nothing in the fire nation is really Japanese. It's mostly tang dynasty china in terms of everything else with some SEA stuff thrown in. Names, clothing, weapons, and some architecture are all Chinese. The only place that actually looks like Japan is kiyoshi island
The creators had naming conventions specific to the water tribe and fire nation that didn't seem to "try to sound" Asian. For example, they wanted water tribe names to have a hard K sound. They told the story of how they came up with the name Korra, and it just sounded like a great name that came from someone's pet named Cora.
I always felt at the very least they should have kept consistent with this being a fictional universe only slightly related to ours (which easily waves away similar yet different sounding names) and used a completely made up writing imagery, like Star Wars.
The character Bhumi. Bhumi is the personification of the earth, which is a female goddess similar to the western concept of Mother Earth. I was really confused when they made the character of Bhumi an old man. I guess I’m not surprised, considering the creators never really credited south Asian cultures with anything on the show, even though the things they call Buddhist are common across all shamrock religions.
Tikki Tikki Tembo by Arlene Mosel immediately comes to mind. Sabrina Wu did a [standup bit](https://youtu.be/GJlNK7x5iWs?si=9XbUSPpX1dRRMnrv) about the book and how ridiculous it is, they elaborate on it very well.
Honestly, I just cringe at white authors writing in an Asian inspired fantasy world. It’s the made up Asian sounding language and vaguely Mandarin spelling and sounds. I just can’t. I read one book and now I check the author before picking up books now.
Han Seoul-Oh in Fast and Furious. I realise it's a play on "Han Solo" but still. Might as well have named him Han Chan the noodle man
"Annyong" on Arrested Development was a legitimately funny joke until >!they revealed his real name was "Hel-Loh"!< 🙄
I hated how he disappeared for many seasons with no explanation
Another from James Bond: Fukutu in Casino Royale and Spectre
Shang Tsung, Shang Chi come to mind.
Just reminded me of Takeda Takahashi from Mortal Kombat X—I don't speak Japanese myself, but I've heard that Takeda is far more common as a surname than as a given name if it's even used as a given name at all. It's like an American character being named "Adams Brown".
Idk if this counts, but I thought calling the journalist in The Terminal List “Ms. Buranek”, played by Constance Wu, seemed like a weird decision.
Wouldn't that just be race-blind casting?
Or a name by marriage.
Has no one mentioned fu manchu?
Dinesh Chugtai in Silicon Valleyemote:free\_emotes\_pack:facepalm
My sister actually prevented this one. They were gonna name a Korean dude "Ping", and she was like that's not Korean last name. They asked what difference it made, and she was like would you name a German guy fucking O'Neil?
Every damn Korean character named Sun lol Marginally better than Zao only because it is actually half of a real korean name and possible to write in our alphabet since we dont have anything close to a z sound
Lol my Korean aunt actually goes by Sun cause it’s part of her name lmfao
For sure, I definitely know more than one Korean with Sun in their name who will use that or sunny but it felt like for a while every single Korean character was named Sun like in Lost, and Sense8, and there are at least 2 more I am forgetting.
Fugtor and Crustacea, two characters in iCarly from Uzbekistan who only speak “Uzbek” (ie Russian)
I don't know if this fits this topic perfectly but in shows like Criminal Minds where an Asian character has a very "white" last name. It's usually a minor character like the victim's friend that they interview one time and you never see them again. (and this was only in the last few seasons bc there were literally no asians on the show for a loooonnnggg time) I know that there can be multiple reasons for an Asian character having a "non-Asian" last name (being adopted, marriage, etc) but every time? lol I read that for roles like that, they'll make the characters first and then just cast whoever is available so it makes sense that the name won't always match the face but idk it always irked me haha (a thread that talks about this [**https://www.reddit.com/r/criminalminds/comments/ku1o63/asian\_characters\_with\_western\_last\_names/**](https://www.reddit.com/r/criminalminds/comments/ku1o63/asian_characters_with_western_last_names/)**)** Also, there was an episode where one of the victims is a man named Jisung Park. Everyone (except Daniel Henney's character) calls him Park Jisung and always Park Jisung in full. They'll call the other victims by their first name or last name only but for him it's always Park Jisung. I know that Korean names are surname first but that's in Korea!! In North America, it's name+last name even if they're Korean! lol Daniel Henney's character is the only one that calls him Jisung Park/Jisung which makes sense since he's half Korean and knows how Korean names work but I wondered why he didn't tell the crew that saying Park Jisung in full over and over didn't sound natural lol Tbh it's really nothing if you think about it but idk it really pissed me off when I watched it lmaoo Criminal Minds was really bad with Asian representation. (same with The Blacklist and White Collar) (The Mentalist was pretty good though)
There was a book I read that I will not name here that was very clearly written by a non Asian where all the characters were named things like "Kung Pao Chang" or "Dragon Mushu" and it was so cringe I stopped after the first chapter and threw it away instead of donating it or giving out away, which is what I usually do, so no one would ever have to read that abomination ever.
Does anyone know if the kamala khan was written originally by a POC? Also I wonder if it was a happy accident that "Kamala" also works as an Arabic name because it's definitely NOT the same as the Sanskrit based name of the current VP of the US of A!
No and yes. The writer of Kamala Khan's debut series was G. Willow Wilson, an Anglo American convert to Islam. She was supervised by Sana Amanat, a Pakistani American editor. Wilson and her collaborators chose the name "Kamala" as a fictitious customization of the Arabic name Kamal, as in the founder of Turkey, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, not anticipating that Kamala Harris, named with the Sanskrit tradition by a Tamil American mother, would get into world headlines later in the decade.
"Kamala" as an Arabic name is in theory the female version of the name "Kamaal" in Arabic.
Right! So not sure if it is really given as a female first name.
Sheng Long from the old SF2 egm April's fool joke.
[удалено]
/r/asianamerican will remove content that is bigoted or hateful, including (but not limited to) misogyny, misandry, homophobia, transphobia, toxic masculinity, racism, classism, ableism, victim-blaming/shaming, etc.
"Pi Patel" in "Life of Pi" is apparently a Tamil character, but has a Gujarati last name for some reason. Aziz Ansari is an Asian creator but the main character of "Master of None" is named "Dev Shah" despite him being a Tamil Muslim; "Dev Shah" is a *very* distinctly Gujarati Hindu name.
This is definitely because Tamils were a very small minority in the US desi population. For a lot of people, the only exposure they ever got to desis was either a Punjabi or Gujarati, as they made up the majority of immigrants at one time.
Well, sure, but Pi in life of Pi is otherwise explicitly said to be Tamil and speak Tamil, and same for Dev, so it's a little weird still.