Try spelling it backwards while eating marble sized jawbreakers

During my last visit with my hair stylist, we talked about the significance of names. I call him my angel not just b/c he has magic hands that scissor my limp hair into voluminous pizzazz; his name IS actually ANGEL. (Whenever I have a bad hair day, it is just a tad more fun to say I'm seeing my Angel...)

When he was born, his parents saw an angel (or something resembling an angelic figure), and they decided to name their child, a boy, Angel. You won't be surprised to hear that he endured all kinds of trauma and entered into countless numbers of scrapes to defend his honor, to defend his sense of identity -- cursed as he was, in his mind, with such a beautiful, unmasculine name for a boy. After turning 18, Angel even thought about changing his name to Andy Lau -- after THE Andy Lau, mind you. Good thing you didn't do it, though. (Not that anyone could BE Andy Lau, that amazing, dashing, rugged, witty, utterly unhandsome Chinese actor, ahem, superstar. No one can be Andy Lau, Angel, but you knew that.)

Now, looking at the accomplished artist standing behind my chair doing miracles with my follicles and graying hair, I know that Angel has come that much closer to accepting his name. Even though he was born and raised in the good ol' US of A, Angel has learned some Chinese, and once in a while tries his hand at swirling the diacritics on his tongue. The sounds get a bit lost, but I couldn't help but detect a note of pride in his voice. He is Chinese, he emphasized.

When I was younger, I was given, and took up for myself, several interesting names. My middle school band director, Mr. R., used to call me Choo Choo Tran. Funny, no? A sixth-grade classmate thought it hilarious to call me Hong Kong. I still don't know how Hong Kong could ever be a clever derivative of HAT. (I still suspect it was less to do with how I was called than how I looked. Yeah, could you tell I loved middle school?) In high school and early years of college, I pronounced my name Juan-Ann (as in Don Juan and Anne). I still shudder when I hear that pronunciation -- I've tried blocking it out, but there are still very dear friends who call me that. Perhaps for a good reason -- as a reminder of a long period in my life when I tried to accommodate other people's deficient language skills. Perhaps as a reminder that I was willing to give and take...

Then there was Wonton. Some of you may still remember the Wonton. I don't know how it happened. I don't believe this person ever even knew that Wonton came out instead of whatever pronunciation it could be. Folks, what does that mean? Wonton?

Also, Wonn-ah? What do those sounds mean? Are they supposed to be iterations or derivatives? I'm not quite sure how to respond. I'm flabbergasted, in fact. (If only it could render me speechless, right? I know, I know...)

Some folks who hear me ramble on and on about "oh, my name, my name, boo hoo, blah blah blah" -- well, they either ignore me or simply graciously nod their heads. They excuse the rest of the world as unskilled English speakers who don't know better. And they suggest I change to something "more manageable."

Angel had no opinions about which name I needed to change to, like say, Rosemary or Juliet or Mary or Anna, etc. But he did wonder why I chose to keep my Vietnamese name. Did I ever want to find something easier?

Easier for whom? I asked.

Here's my confession: Within the past ten years, I've found perverse joy in hearing people attempt to pronounce my name. A part of me wishes to relieve them of the anxiety, to help them spell it phonetically, to break the name down into distinct, unrecognizable syllables that they can manage. Another part of me -- I don't have to dig so deep to find that part -- perhaps 74% of me thinks "If I can teach myself "Angelina" then you can surely learn two syllables?"

It's complicated, you say. That's true. We each have our own challenges. Me, I think Japanese, German, Baha'i, or Rwandan may be difficult. The language of the Bushmen tribe in Africa is difficult -- all that clicking! English is difficult. Try spelling English words that you don't know. Nye impossible, isn't it? Me, give me anything in Vietnamese and whether or not I understand the meaning of the word (not to mention use it in a sentence), I'll know how to spell it. The problem is... if only I'll try harder!

Angel, of course, is still trying to pronounce my name. I wish I could help him out by offering something simpler, with less rounded sounds, fewer inflections, definitely no diacritics. If I could persuade my parents to name me something different, I might have saved us the trouble. If my parents weren't so interested "special names" for their kids, I could have been, oh I dunno, Bob. Unfortunately for my hair guy, my parents didn't see heavenly figures. And, no one calls me angel.