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[Opinions] Can't speak for Mirfak, but ...
... if they know enough English to knowingly select Nevaeh and Purity for their children, I think I'd be inclined to assume that they knew what they were doing. This does not mean that I like either of the names they chose, but why should I? No doubt they wouldn't like my kids' names either.I taught two Chinese brothers once who had recently arrived in South Africa from, I think, Hong Kong or maybe Sinagapore, where they'd learnt some English at school. One took the English name of Joe, which he said sounded like his Chinese name - probably Chou I suppose. The other, a remarkably good-looking boy, called himself Fen, which had the kind of glamorous teenage angsty vibe I associate with Heathcliff; when I asked him, he said he'd just flipped through his dictionary looking for a one-syllable name that started with F, and liked the look of Fen. I did consider the consequences if he'd kept looking until he encountered another F word, and was glad that he hadn't, because as his English teacher it would have been my task to explain why that was a bad idea.
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My case was different because I taught Chinese students in China, but some of the names they picked were pretty random to say the least. I’ve had Pineapple, Unicorn and a male Susan. A girl my colleague taught called herself Boring because her Chinese name was Bao Ling (so my colleague just called her that). The one student I forced to change names was Fish. I might have been stricter if I were outside of China, or preparing students to go abroad, but since it wasn’t the case I decided this wasn’t a hill I was going to die on.
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haha thanks for the laugh, Anne!
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