Vol. 69 No. 2 (2021)
Articles

The Adoption of non-Chinese Names as Identity Markers of Chinese International Students in Japan: A Case Study at a Japanese Comprehensive Research University

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  • Jinyan Chen
Jinyan Chen
Kyushu University, Fukuoka, Japan
Cover of Names Volume 69 Number 2 May 2021
DOI: https://doi.org/10.5195/names.2021.2239

Published 2021-05-14

Keywords

  • Chinese students,
  • Japan,
  • Japanese names,
  • English names,
  • anthroponym,
  • identity
    • ...More
    Less

Copyright (c) 2021 Jinyan Chen

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Abstract

This study explores naming practices among Chinese international students and their relation to personal identity during their sojourn in Japan. Although previous studies have reported that some Chinese international students in English-speaking countries adopt names of Western origin (Cotterill 2020; Diao 2014; Edwards 2006), participants in this study were found to exhibit different naming practices: either adopting names of Japanese or Western origin; or retaining both Western and Japanese names. Drawing on fifteen semi-structured interviews with Mainland Han Chinese students, this investigation examines their motivations for adopting non-Chinese names and determines how personal identities are presented through them. The qualitative analysis reveals that the practice of adopting non-Chinese names is influenced by teacher-student power relations, Chinese conventions for terms of address, pronunciation, and context- sensitivity of personal names. As will be shown in this article, through the respondents’ years of self-exploration, their self-adopted non-Chinese names gradually became internalized personal identity markers that allow the bearers to explore and exhibit personality traits, which might not have been as easily displayed via their Chinese given names.

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