I answered the phone this evening. MIL was on the other end.
“How was Halloween?” she asked.
“Oh,” I said, “M and L had a great time.”
“Uh, ” said MIL,”Why don’t you call L by her American name? R is a good name.” (Also, again she mispronounced R making it sound like a kind of cheese.)
“Well, L is the only name she has ever known. We like it. She recognizes it. So that is what we call her.” I said.
“But what is her LEGAL name.” said MIL.
“Legally, she is R____ Q_____ Y______ Lastname.” I replied.
“Ohhhh.” MIL was clearly distressed, “So many names. Maybe she should have less names. It is too complicated.”
“I think she will be able to handle it. Anyway, Halloween was fun! Talk to you later!” I said as I handed the phone to Mr. A.
I’m totally trying to figure out the cheese. I have a guess, but that would be QUITE a mangling.
LOL. One of the reasons my MIL converted to Christianity is that “it’s easier to only worry about one god.”
Seriously, this is like a Seinfeld episode. I’m trying to figure out what girl’s name starts with R and sounds like cheese.
Thanks for the MIL story.
My mom shares the R name and telemarketers often call her by the cheese instead.
Your MIL has really grown on me.
I think you handled it well, especially when it could have kept going on and you deflected it back to the Halloween question. You are a saint dealing with her.
I too am having my brain ceaselessly trying to figure out the girl/cheese name which maybe begins with something else besides R. Ohhh! Too complicated!
Slick way you have of slipping out of a messy conversation, there! hehe
Don’t tell me you named her Rimburger. Poor kid.
I wish I had just kept my daughter’s Chinese name as her first name instead of moving it to the middle. Actually, I have second thoughts about both my kids’ names. But that’s a whole other subject.
My little one has lots of names as well. People are confused, but she is just fine.
Redder? Is that her name?
I like the idea of keeping her birth name (or at least the name she knows)
My parents had my first name changed to an American one and put my Chinese name as the middle one.
I’m not sure which way I would like it now as I’m pretty much used to my American name (though all my relatives and Chinese friends call me by my Chinese name).
At the very least it’s much easier when calling for customer service and they require you to say your name.
My cousin still has her Chinese name and each time she’s like “It’s ‘T’ as in Tango, ‘Z’ as in Zebra, ‘U’ as in Umbrella…”
Oh, and my boyfriend’s lucky in that his Chinese name is very similar to his English name.
In his Chinese name, he has the character 傑 (‘jie’) in it. Which sounds very similar to Jay.
So that could be a middle ground to find a Chinese name that somewhat matches English names.