Changing names, part two

"Jeff-san" and "师捷"

The Red School House (1873) by Winslow Homer (Public Domain). My Chinese name contained the character for “teacher”

The first part of this series saw a progression in my name, starting with “boss,” moving on to “little Jeff” and ending with my twin being known as “more Jeff.”

But when I moved east and away from the UK, to places where western scripts aren’t used, it all got a bit more complicated.

In Kyoto, I became ジェフ ストリーター (“je-fu su-to-rii-taa”). Or rather, ストリーター ジェフ(su-to-rii-taa je-fu), since the surname comes first in Japanese. These characters, called “katakana,” were first developed in the 9th century CE (or earlier, depending on the source you consult) by Japanese monks to indicate the pronunciation of Chinese characters. What seems to have started as a scholarly scribble gradually became codified, and by the 14th century CE at the latest, they seem to have taken their current form. Since the 20th century, katakana has been used to write foreign names or loan words (before that, Chinese characters were used).

The system is not designed to give a perfect imitation of the sound but to put it into sounds that belong to the Japanese language. So, because the end consonant of “ff” does not occur in Japanese, it gets changed to the approximate sound of “fu”, adding another syllable to my name. And because the consonant cluster “str” is also alien to Japanese, it gets changed to “suto” (スト). 

What this can lead to is not only not being able to read your name (until you have the hang of katakana), but also not necessarily understanding it when said. When I’d just arrived in Kyoto, I was required make a short speech at an event and when I arrived, I took my place on the stage. After a few minutes, my name was called in Japanese, which was the cue for me to stand up and make a bow before speaking. Oblivious, I remained seated while everyone looked at me expectantly. Eventually, I got the message. But it wasn't the best way to win over my audience.

Most Japanese colleagues actually used ‘Jeff’ and not ‘jefu’, to which they almost always added 'san'. As you'll probably know, san (さん) is a Japanese honorific title that equates to ‘Mr’ or ‘Ms’ in English. So ‘Jeff-san’ it was. If that sounds very formal, it isn’t, really. Most Japanese staff would call each other by their surname followed by ‘san’, the usual practice for workmates and people you don’t know well. “Jeff-san” was really a half-way house between Japanese and English naming conventions. And I was 'sutoriitaa san’ to senior contacts and acquaintances. 

It’s complicated, and although foreigners are given quite a lot of leeway to make mistakes, Japanese naming conventions are something you really want to get right. And that was fine. I was learning new lessons about names and about how they could carry more social nuance than, say, in the UK. 

My arrival in China, years later, was to teach me further lessons. 

Before I flew out to Shanghai, I was surprised to be emailed by a future colleagues asking whether I already had a Chinese name. No, I replied, not that I’m aware of. Ok, they said, we’ll choose one for you. 

Choose my name? I was mystified, intrigued and a little worried that this all sounded like some kind of baptism. In a sense, it was.

But I was, above all, curious. What would my new name be like? 

Anyway, a few days later, my new name was sent to me for my approval. Just looking at the two Chinese characters (most Chinese names are of two or three characters, and the surname always comes first) didn’t help me that much: 师捷 (‘shijie’). I knew the first one (‘shi’, which roughly rhymes with “the”, not “she” in English and means teacher), but not the second, ‘jie’ (the pronunciation can be approximated by spelling out the individual letters GA in English (“gee-ay”). 

I was proud to have worked as a teacher a few years before. But I wasn’t going out to Shanghai to teach. Had a misunderstanding occurred, I wondered? 

But then I received this more detailed translation of both characters:

And, when the two characters were put together, I was assured that they formed an auspicious name. “Master, expert”, those I liked, and also “triumph and nimble". I was a bit worried about some of the military connotations (especially as this was the time of the disastrous US/UK invasion of Iraq). But I felt I had to trust my colleagues and said "yes”. 

After I arrived in Shanghai, I asked my colleagues how they came up with the name. They said they started with the first sounds of my surname and the sound of my given name and looked for characters using those sounds in Chinese that might fit someone in my role. So the “s” of Streeter” and the “j” of Jeff led them to what I was told was an unusual, even distinctive name. 

My next challenge was to learn how to pronounce it and get the tones right. For a name, there's no useful context to help you understand a sound.

It might not matter if I mispronounced the character “shi” in teacher, ‘lao shi’, if I got the first sound “lao” (literally, “old”) right, and if the context made the meaning fairly obvious.

But for my name, I thought, if I got it wrong, there was no context to fall back on. I’d either get it right or I wouldn't. 

However, it turns out that it’s common to “spell” your name in China by using common combinations of the characters that everyone will recognise. So in my case, I’d say “laoshi de shi” meaning “Shi as in teacher” and “jié jìng as in shortcut" (捷 徑). 

That was a lot to process, and there was more to come. I also had to learn to recognise my name in the flow of tonal language, where changes in pronunciation that were barely appreciable to me would completely alter the meaning of a word. Cue more indignity at being stared at when called to the podium for a speech while I worked out whether they had just said my name.

And I also had to learn to write my name, rather like a kid starting school. This was actually quite fun (especially 捷) but not that easy. 

If you’re still with me, you might appreciate that the complications of naming in my peripatetic career multiplied when I was in China. Yet, it was fascinating—a tiny gateway into the culture¹. And my colleagues seemed to have done a good job. As I handed over my business card at meetings, I would sometimes see nods of appreciation at my name. 

And that was important. Names matter in China, as anyone setting up a new subsidiary, branch, or business in China will tell you. To succeed in business, it’s important to have a  name with a positive meaning. If you get it wrong, business success can become an uphill task. 

Then, having learnt my name all over again, it was eventually time to leave China and try my luck elsewhere.

Heading back towards the west to Turkey, my next destination, there were no issues about script, as the old Ottoman Turkish alphabet had long been abandoned. In Ankara, I was called “Jeff Bey”. This I liked, despite the pronunciation of “bey” being the way the English word “boy” used to be pronounced in that part of the Devon countryside where I grew up. Was I Jeff Boy? Boy Jeff?²

And from there, Jeff Bey (or Boy Jeff) headed off to Egypt. Being called simply Jeff” or “Mr Streeter” was one of the very few boring things that happened to me in my eventful time there. But the office drivers, who would take me to meetings, fighting their way through the traffic of Cairo for hours at a stretch, had other ideas and called me “Mister (or rather, ‘Mistah’) Jeff”.

I have to say I wasn’t very happy with this at first. It reminded me of the moment in Conrad's novel ‘Heart of Darkness’ where the death of a key character is announced with ‘Mistah Kurtz—he dead’ which was then used as an epigraph by TS Eliot in his poem ‘The Hollow Men’. Kurtz was bad, mad, and then dead, and I didn’t particularly want to be reminded of any of those things. But somehow, the expression grew on me. And it created a bond with those two colleagues, with who I spent so much time on the insanely busy streets of the city. So, Mistah Jeff it would be. 

I haven’t physically moved to a new city for a little while now. But it seems I can’t break the habit of changing names. Because now that I have taken up residence in the virtual English Republic of Letters, I’ve done it again. In English, I have gone by the shortened version of my name “Jeff”. But I now style myself “Jeffrey” on Substack, and I think I’ll stick to that.

For now, at least. But don’t worry; I’ll answer to any of the names I’ve revealed to you in this two-part essay. My names, after all, will stay with me forever. A bit like luggage stickers on suitcases or the barnacles on a whale, they’re part of who I’ve become. 

Just don’t expect me to remember how to spell them all. 

As I learnt from your wonderful comments after the first part of this essay, everyone has a story to tell about names. I look forward to hearing from you in the comments section this time, too.

1. For more information on Chinese names, here's an easy guide: https://studycli.org/chinese-culture/chinese-names/

2. One other note about names in Turkey. It’s common for men to call each other “abi”, or big brother. I also learnt that “abi” might be used in a family, so you’d say “abi” instead of your elder brother’s name (“abla” is used in a similar way for women). Which, as it happens, is a bit like in Japanese or Chinese, where you might call your elder sister or brother by those descriptive titles rather than using their names. I find the more you look at names and naming practises, the more you realise how endlessly varied (and fascinating) they are.