Vol. 47 No. 1 (1999)
Research Article

“They Call Me Bruce, But They Won't Call Me Bruce Jones:” Asian American Naming Preferences and Patterns

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  • Ellen Dionne Wu
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1179/nam.1999.47.1.21

Published 1999-03-01

Copyright (c) 1999 Maney

Creative Commons License

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

Abstract

Abstract

The names of Asian Americans are indicative of their individual and collective experiences in the United States. Asian immigrants and their descendants have created, modified, and maintained their names by individual choice and by responding to pressures from the dominant Anglo-American society.

American society's emphasis on conformity has been a major theme in the history of Asian American naming conventions (as it has been for other groups), but racial differences and historical circumstances have forced Asian Americans to develop more fluid and more complex naming strategies as alternatives to simply adopting Anglo names, a common practice among European immigrants, thus challenging the paradigms of European-American assimilation and naming practices.

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