My wife’s name is Cathy Heng, but actually that isn’t her name.
That was the name given to her on the first day at school, in Singapore, by her English teachers.
They said they couldn’t remember all the Chinese names, so they gave the children names they could remember.
It’s understandable, her real name is Heng Siew Keow.
Her sisters are Heng Siew Hong and Heng Siew Cheng.
A person brought up in England couldn’t remember a classful of names like that
So Cathy was given an easier name, and her sisters were called Betty and Bebe.
And Cathy’s two brothers, Heng Boon Heng and Heng Boon Huat, became Tony and Alex.
There wasn’t any sinister, colonial motive behind it.
The children just needed to be easily identifiable and memorable to the teachers.
The children needed to fit into the teacher’s mental Roladex.
This is how the human brain works, it needs help.
In our business we call it a mnemonic – a device to aid identification and memory.
If we want to stake a claim in the mind, we need something to make it stand out.
This isn’t anything new.
Years ago in Africa, English teachers changed the Xhosa name Rolihlahla to the more easily memorable Nelson Mandela.
And few people in the west would remember the name Gautama Siddhartha, but everyone knows the name Buddha.
Anjeze Gonxhe Bojaxhia is too difficult a name for us, but Mother Teresa isn’t.
The power of a mnemonic wasn’t lost on Iosef Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili either, he changed his name to Stalin.
Edson Arantes do Nascimento benefitted from a more memorable name as Pele.
In show business of course, it’s always been true.
A name not only needs to be shorter and more accessible, it also needs to be different.
Ehrich Weiss became famous when he changed his name to Houdini.
Steveland Judkins was more memorable as Stevie Wonder.
Terry Bollette stayed in the memory better as Hulk Hogan.
Caryn Johnson is much better remembered as Whoopi Goldberg.
Reginald Dwight found he stuck in the memory better as Elton John.
Paul Hewson found his name stood out more once it became Bono.
Declan McManus was more memorable as Elvis Costello.
Marshall Mathers stood out in the mind as Eminem.
Eric Bishop found he was more memorable as Jamie Foxx.
And great artists throughout time have always known the lesson of the mnemonic.
Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni was known by just his first name.
While Pablo Diego Jose Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno Maria de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santisima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso is remembered by just his last name.
We should learn the same thing.
The human mind is too full to constantly take in and store new information.
Unless there’s a good reason.
Or unless we repackage it.
That’s why it should be our job, to simplify whatever we want people to remember and make it easy and fun.
So it slips readily into the memory, because this isn’t an exam.
People don’t get points for remembering who we are and what we said.
Anyway, they’ve got too many other things on their mind.
Unlike us, ordinary people have a life outside of advertising.
I freelanced at a Japanese agency.
The Japanese CD had problems even with
Western names.
Lionel, for example, became Rionel.
So he started calling by numbers.
So Rionel became 1.
Joyce became 2.
Robin,
At Cathy’s mum’s temple in Singapore, the nearest the nuns could get to my name was LAYBIT TECKLOCK
The thinking why Eric Bishop went for Jamie Foxx is pretty smart. It gave him an advantage over his (male) competitors early in his career. https://youtu.be/JqCDtanGBnM
Now would be lay wit tlock (exposure to cable tee wee.
No v sound in Chinese.
So v becomes w.
So Volkswagen becomes wee double u)
I remember reading an interview with Elton John, where he was asked why he changed his name. He said he “didn’t think the world was ready for a superstar from Pinner called Reg Dwight.”
As an aside, my Chinese name is “Zhi YiRen”. It’s a close phonetic translation of my English name, but the characters connote ‘friendly professor’, which is nice. I used to get compliments on it, so my thanks to Jimmy Choi, who came up with it. On the downside, my Chinese nickname was “Ji Ji” which means ‘jiggy jig”. You can’t win ’em all …
As Mandarin is a tonal language if you don’t pronounce precisely you could be saying a totally different word. My Chinese students in Beijing and Taizhou all took English names, but some of my Chinese teaching colleagues did not.
When I worked in Dubai I discovered that my name, Nick, when pronounced with an Arabic accent sounds like Neek. “Neek” is the Arabic term for f**ck you.
I asked that I be called by family name instead, which worked.
Speaking of altering names in order to make them simpler and memorable.. In the 80’s I worked in Hong Kong, walking into the office one morning I said Hi! to the new secretary who was Cantonese and her first day working with “Westerners”… her reaction to my seemingly innocent offer of welcome was met with the most horrifying facial expression of complete and utter and total disgust! Hai in Cantonese is a very, very derogatory work used for a part of the female anatomy! Sometimes abbreviations for ease become memorable for the wrong reasons!
When I worked at Leo Burnett in .hong ?Kong I was group head to a bunch of .Chinese, who I liked a lot and also as it turned out they liked me.
My manner at work was brisk, quick, serious, and professional.
Their nickname for me was “the Solldier”.
As I also had a flat top hair cut at that time.
I liked my nickname.
Dave, it reminded me how powerful mnemonics can be. If you remember the OJ trial where so much evidence pointed to OJ being guilty. Johhny Cochran knew he had to get jurors to ignore all of that, especially when they realised that glove the murderer wore may not fit.
‘If it don’t fit, you must acquit!’. It was strategically and creatively brilliant.