Identity Crisis

Many Chinese characters are made up of 2 components. On the left side is often a commonly used radical, usually indicating a certain type of pronunciation or associated with a certain type of meaning (For example, the 3-dot water on the left of 汤，河，港 all associate these characters with water - they are the characters for soup, river, and harbor). On the right side might be a combination of radicals or other strokes. So you may have two characters with the same right side, but with (ever so slightly) different left side radicals - these characters differ in pronunciation and meaning.

So now... my identity crisis.

Up until a few years ago, I had only known my Chinese name as it was pronounced in Cantonese. And though I had learned to write it a few times over the course of many years, it never really quite stuck with me. And I think at the time I was learning to write it in traditional rather than simplified.

Two years ago, I was having a conversation with a Mandarin-Chinese-speaking person who was asking me what my Chinese name was. I said I only knew it in Cantonese, and I said my name. Since he spoke Cantonese too, he said, "Ohh... in Mandarin, that's so-and-so" and then he proceded to write the name on paper. I looked at the characters he wrote, and they looked as I had remembered them. So there it was... my name. And it is the name I have used ever since.

And then... last week, my parents came into town. And I showed them my student ID card. My dad looked at it and said, "Oh, your name is written incorrectly." What?! "That's not your name. Your name is written like this..."

And then my dad proceded to show me that the first character of my given name is written with a different left-side radical than I was told two years ago by that man (who shall remain nameless). The left-side was, in fact, not ⻉ like I was told; no, it's ⻐.

Implications: for 4 months, I have been pronouncing my name incorrectly. I have been writing my name incorrectly. All of the important, official documents still use my English name... but there are a few documents (like my student ID card) which have my... incorrectly written name. My teachers all call me by my incorrect name. My newly made friends all call me by my incorrect name.

This is the English equivalent of finding out that my name is actually Alfred, and that I've been spelling and saying it wrong all these years.

So now I face a dilemma. Do I begin using my correct name, which means having to explain sheepishly to all my friends and teachers that I've been writing and saying it wrong all this time? Or just go on using my incorrect name, which was not chosen for me by my parents but rather by a guy who duped me into trusting his Cantonese-to-Mandarin translation skills?

I have yet to decide what I will do, or if I will do anything at all.

On a separate note, isn't the Chinese-style id photo totally cool looking?