What’s In a Name?
April 26th, 2009 | View Comments
Recently, Rep. Betty Brown of Texas made some comments that are causing quite a stir, particularly in the Asian community.
Our resident Texan can correct me if I’m wrong, but Texas is currently reviewing a Voter ID bill. One problem with Voter ID is the matching of names, particularly Asian names. The point the speaker addressing Rep. Brown makes is that Asian names can cause ID problems because a person can fall under multiple “aliases” depending on who did the transliteration of the name and when it was done. Additionally, many people use English names, which may or may not be a legal name. Since the names don’t match, the person cannot vote.
However, Rep. Brown fails to grasp this concept and actually says, “Can’t you see that this is something that would make it a lot easier for you and the people who are poll workers if you could adopt a name just for identification purposes that’s easier for Americans to deal with?”
Not only would this add another name to the mix and defeat the whole purpose, it’s just stupid. But then again, I have always felt a little weird having both a Chinese AND an English name. Perhaps Rep. Brown, you are right. Maybe I do need just one name that I can use for ID purposes that is easier for government officials worldwide to “deal with”.
How about Ethelbert Grzeskiewicz?
Peter posted this on April 26th, 2009 @ 12:46am in Chinese, Culture Gaps, Translations | Permalink to "What’s In a Name?"
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