By Jia Ying Lim

The teacher cleared her throat, aligning her sharp pencil nib to our printed names on the class register. “Isabelle Lee Shi Qi … Daniel Teo … Lim Jia Ying…” As I raised my hand, she paused and lingered over my name. I bit my lip. Was I about to be singled out on the very first day of class?

She pursed her lips. “There’re two of you named Lim Jia Ying in this class. What are we going to do?”

Another person with the exact same first and last name? My name wasn’t exactly the Asian equivalent of John Smith, and last names were usually the differentiator. I glanced around until I caught the gaze of the person whose face was attached to the torso that was attached to the other raised hand. There was a pregnant glance of equal parts solidarity and wariness.

This situation would not do. How would teachers refer to us in these two years with us in the same classes, how would we write our names on our homework assignments and report cards and parental consent slips? The conclusion was this: because I was eleventh on the class registration list, I was now christened as “Jia Ying 11”. Because the other Lim Jia Ying was twelfth on the list, and life is unfair, she would simply be “Jia Ying”.

When I told my parents after returning home, they indignantly demanded to know why I couldn’t be the one just called “Jia Ying.” I shrugged.

I didn’t mind. I’m still using the same “limjiaying11” email username now. It’s true that when I see her posts on Facebook, I sometimes wonder if that could have been me doing and writing those things. As if her name meant we possessed a common essence, that we were interchangeable. I wish I could report that our identical names forged a unique bond that endured and transcended all our differences and soldered us together forever. But it was just another thing that happened in the year I first had my period, the year a boy first shakily confessed a crush on me, the year I met a true friend who’d remain so for the next fourteen years.

I hadn’t even been that shocked that the name “Jia Ying” was also claimed by another. Chinese names basically meld two distinct words with prosperous or auspicious meanings. Many of my female friends were named after beauty, feminine gentleness, happiness, floral motifs. The chosen pair of words anchor and harbor and shelter the buds of outsized hopes and dreams and over-expectation of new, eager parents.

Apparently my name was chosen from options conjured by a wizened old man with a sharp chin who looked at my birth date and various other vaguely random factors like the weather. (Such superstitions are normal among my mother’s five sisters, who spoke mainly Mandarin and prepared feasts of fresh food and folded paper objects to pray to their ancestors.) In Mandarin, “Jia” 佳 means good (or excellent, beautiful, fine). “Ying” 颖 means clever (or gifted, intelligent, smart).

No name better encapsulates the chronic fear of losing (kiasu, a commonly professed national virtue) and drive for attainment of the Singaporean. At least three of my Facebook friends are also called “Jia Ying”. I used to constantly discover new “Jia Ying”s during role call in Chinese class, sneaky Jia Yings that usually went by their Western names instead. My mother likes to recount the time she signed me up for art classes, and the receptionist informed her that there were already ten other students named “Jia Ying”.

Sure, I could never find my name on those personalized souvenirs at gift shops, though that never stopped me from trying. I will probably never experience the thrill and instant affinity of encountering a fictional character that shares my name (or maybe that’s because I do not read and probably cannot understand Chinese books). I spell out my name habitually when ordering lattes or making a reservation. But there were Jiaqi’s and Jiaxuan’s and Jiawen’s and Jiaqing’s and Jiawei’s, and there were Yingying’s and Shiying’s and Peiying’s and Cuiying’s and Liying’s. So my name was no anomaly.

•••

My name served as a pre-emptive hedge against the willful renouncement of my Chinese heritage. My parents had nothing but the deepest condescension for people who gave their children Western names, or as they called them, “Christian” names, especially as these names would come first before their last name and Chinese name. (Christianity was their synecdoche for the West, something I would also have to delicately navigate when I became a Christian: another story.)

When we were ten, appalled that my sister and I had named our dolls Elizabeth and Georgina and Louisa and other names lifted from the pages of Enid Blyton, my mother warned darkly, “Remember, you don’t want to become a ‘banana’ all right.”

My sister and I would roll our eyes with as much gusto as we could muster without injuring ourselves and mutter, “Yes, yes, we know. It’s just a game.”

(A banana may be pale white or snow white or stark white on the inside, but remains stubbornly, unchangeably, yellow on the outside.)

“Don’t be like X, who married an angmoh (Singaporean slang for red-haired man)! Don’t be like X who doesn’t even go to hawker centers anymore but only eats brunch. Don’t be like X who can’t even say hello to her grandparents because she simply forgot how to speak Chinese.” It seemed there were endlessly available examples of “bananas” to serve as cautionary warnings, as I refused to voluntarily speak Chinese and devoured unhealthy amounts of English books and movies and decided I wanted to study in America.

They warned ominously against my choosing a Western name for myself, as some of my friends had done. I once unwisely complained that my name was always forgotten. They were savage: “If you deserve to be remembered, you will be remembered.”

•••

But “Jia Ying” was abruptly unpronounceable once I stepped foot in college in New York. I watched as my name was promptly forgotten during those orientation icebreakers and self-introductions. Some people wouldn’t bother ever speaking to me again (or maybe that was for other reasons—who knows). Some people would try to call me or get my attention without revealing that they had forgotten my name, out of that habitual American politeness. The more earnest and well-meaning would frown, stumble over it, ask me to repeat it, try to repeat it but end up saying it the exact same way, ask if that were better, and I would nod encouragingly with a forced smile.

What was the point of a name like that?

First I collapsed it into Jiaying, so people wouldn’t call me Jia, thinking that “Ying” was my middle name.

I’m not sure why I thought that would make a difference.

Then I caved. “I’m Jiaying—but you can call me JY. Like, the initials JY.” I would smile, slightly ironically. “It’s easier that way.”

•••

Practically, renaming or naming yourself may be advantageous. We can legally change our first name, neglect or adopt a last name, or choose a new one altogether. Names are flimsy, insubstantial representations. The wrong name sabotages, closes doors, lowers pay, diminishes workplace opportunities. Professors cannot call on you if they do not remember your name. Networking contacts cannot provide a referral if they forget how to spell it, especially if a Henry or a Jack or a Jessica pop into mind as well. These are the more benign examples that exclude actual racism.

But why does it feel so disingenuous to choose a name for yourself? I considered choosing something other than “JY”, but balked.

A name is an identity that extends beyond temporary capitalist gain. It reveals, defines, categorizes. Just as we don’t choose our family, we usually don’t choose our first names. There’s a weight to the given name. Names don’t feel real until they are bestowed, whether by your parents or loved ones or through ceremonial rites of baptisms. Naming yourself is too radical and too literal an act of self-definition.

I suppose “JY” worked for a bit. The most common response was the approving observation that it sounds like a rapper’s name. I suppose it does. I just never quite evaluated the aesthetics of my name that earnestly: It was a utilitarian move, my way of secretly preserving my actual name (for those who knew what JY stood for) and truncating it to the point where it could fulfill the functions of a name: it could be pronounced, remembered, and used.

•••

I’ve considered other names, sometimes as an idle fantasy, sometimes as stimulating dinner conversation fodder. My only condition was that I wanted a name with two syllables, because my cardinal rule was that it sounds better when the first name is a different number of syllables from the last name (Lim). That seemed to leave many two or three or even four-syllabled names for the picking. But, turns out everyone has an opinion of what a Joy or Catherine or Ruth should look like. Also turns out that there are many people I do not want to share a name with.

During my brief summer stint at a business newspaper, I was Sofia. Or at least, I became Sofia for the sake of my email address, because there was a full-time hire with the exact same first and last name (again!). Being the lowly intern, I was naturally instructed to somehow obtain another name. In the five-minute conversation with human resources, I chose Sofia. I liked that Sophia meant wisdom in Greek. And I didn’t want it to be spelled like the “Sophia”s I knew. And I had recently read a few novels on Eastern Europe and had always wanted to visit Bulgaria after reading about it.

But everyone who mattered, like my mentor and my fellow interns that I shared lazy afternoons and countless waffles and ice creams with, still called me Jia Ying. I would always take a few seconds to realize that the person calling the name Sofia was actually referring to me, Sofia!

But I became friends with a fellow freshman named Sofia (did I become good friends with her partially because we shared the same name? I will never know.) We met up regularly, lived together for a semester, laughed and cried through breakups and academic failures. It would be too weird to be a second Sofia. So now, I’m still just JY.

•••

I doubt the rapper name JY is the best partner to plunge into the working world with. It seems unbefitting an actual adult, which I was pretending to be.

But what will I use on my Facebook account, if old college friends try to locate me or newfound ones try to add me? What will I use when I write? What will I get baptized with? What will I use at my wedding? I want continuity and I want pronounceable-ness and I want functionality and I want something that I like.

Now I’m flirting with simply “Jia.” It should function well for these few years of living and working away from Asia, away from home. It should be easy to remember. (Or easier. I’m not over-optimistic here). It’s the name my emails are already addressed to, since most companies assume “Ying” as my middle name. It’s one half of the nickname my boyfriend calls me. It’s minimalist and pretty slick and if people cannot pronounce that single word then they will just have to deal with it on their own.

“Jia” is a compromise. It’s my name, spliced brutally into half. It’s part of me. It’s not something entirely new and foreign: how could I possibly name this foreign, ill-defined, mysterious, and incomprehensible being?

But it’s also a whole new identity to be “Jia” instead of “Jia Ying,” as I begin working and living and eating and breathing in America, after the reassuring structures of college as “JY,” sans family and old familiar friends as “Jia Ying” or even “limjiaying11,” a twenty-hour flight and twelve-hour time difference away from home. I preserve a fraction of myself, I relinquish a modicum, and I gain something else in exchange.

•••

JIA YING LIM is a writer based in Philadelphia. Her work has previously appeared at Quarterly Literary Review of Singapore, the leading literary journal.