Lao Voices

Imagine if I don’t have a name, how would you address me, ‘Yo! You over there!’ obviously there’s no need to do that because I’ve many, at least 4 names that I’ve known of (might be more that people refer to me by, but we won’t go there) One of my readers made a comment on my blog and he said, ‘Nye, who ever you are…’ I was confused at first by his comment, obviously I’m a Laotian blogger and my blog is Nye, but realized that he must have came from Laoplanet.net, and read my posting as Ginger. Sometimes I wonder why I didn’t keep my name as just Nye, why make it confusing for others, confusing for myself as well, honestly I don’t have an answer to that, might be on the spur of the moment types of decision, jealous of someone’s cool name. My real name is a boy’s name, mainly because my dad is Chinese and wanted sons, so he named my sisters and I, boys’ name, more like naming us before we were born. I’ve an opportunity to change it when I neutralized to become an American citizen, but never did and might be because it’s very unique and given to me by my parents, back when I was in school, if the teacher looked at a name that they couldn’t pronounce, I can pretty much bet that it’s my name.

I read once that back in the olden days, Lao and Thai only have one syllable first name, then the officials wanted people to have 2 syllables first name. One professor in Thailand was named Var, and then his mom at the time didn’t know what to change it to, so she changed his name to PraVar, which he kept it until this day. When he got older, realized that it was a female name, even looked up in the phone directory and sure enough there were several, and all were females. He thought about changing it, numerous times, but couldn’t come up with any other name. He is a professor at a local university, and many of his students wrote his name as PaVah (meaning shocking), he jumped when he saw that, who in the world would name their children that, of course gave a long lecture about names to his students, make sure that they read what they wrote down. I think it might be time for him to change his name, I think I would if that’s me.

Just like Laotian last name, back then my dad said that we didn’t have any, and then the officials came out and said that we needed one. For many Lao country folks that lacked education, what clever last name could they possibly come up with? Their solution, simple, they came up with Dong, Pah, Na (forest and rice patty field, etc.), that’s all they’d see, but then it was too short, so they added Pheung in front of it, meaning ‘relying on’, so the majority of the people from that region have the last name of PheungDong, PheungPah, PheungNa…are you one of them, so country I would say, but that’s their name.

I ran into an old friend back in September of last year, while visiting my sisters in NYC. His mom owns a restaurant in Chinatown, so I stopped by to see how he’s doing. I asked his mom if I could see Hi, strange name you’d say, he hated it with a passion because we’d tease him and always calling him, ‘Hi Hi’. He was surprised to see me, it’s been over 12 years since I last saw him, and he didn’t change by much. I went on and said ‘Hi Hi…’ he stopped me in mid sentence and said ‘It’s John now’, what? Since when? Needless to say, I felt like I was talking to a stranger, this was the boy next door that I grew up with, and when we parted, I had to make myself to say ‘Bye John’.

I later on went to a Thai Restaurant to meet 3 Chinese friends that I grew up with, they also didn’t change by much. One of my friends named Lily, also decided to change her name, its Kasie now…I remember receiving her e-mail to confirm the date of my arrival, but never made the connection that it was Lily. She asked me, ‘What’s your name now?’ I thought it’s rather funny when she asked me that, It’s still the same name I’m afraid; is that okay?

What about you, do you like your name? Why did you choose certain pen name when you write? Care to share, please leave a comment here. Thank you kindly.