Pronounce “potato” or “tomato.” Then, pronounce my first name, Masato. The readers are likely to pronounce my name with almost the identical set of vowels that are used in those examples of vegetable names. This is exactly how the people around me pronounced my name.
They usually tried to realize the correct or at least acceptable pronunciation. They tried a few patterns of pronunciation of my names which were slightly different from each other. Unfortunately, in most of the cases, all the patterns were not even acceptable. What was worse, they usually did not have ears trained to hear foreign pronunciations. They could not improve their pronunciations of my name, after I repeated it slowly and clearly. This occasion happened again and again. It really troubled me. I could have let someone call me by a weird name. Actually I did so to a few people. Then these people met with each other and started arguing over the correct pronunciation of my name. I gave up and endeavored to instruct how to pronounce my name. It was a terribly exhausting experience.
One day I made a telephone call to make an appointment to see a professor at his office. I needed to do so very frequently because I was planning to challenge enough classes to become a sophomore in one term. Every time I called the secretaries of the professors, I had a hard time giving my name to them. I could not write down it to show them. They mercilessly spoke fast. Telephone conversations were nightmare to me. But on that day the secretary I talked to seemed to be able to jot down my name immediately. I knew her name. She was not a Japanese-American. I could not think of any reason why she could write my name down so soon. I kept wondering until the day I visited the professor’s office, where I saw the secretary’s schedule book. On the book, I read her handwriting “Student with a strange name.”
I felt the definite need to have a nickname for myself. Giving myself an English name like Chinese people often do did not come natural to me. Some advised me to name myself Matthew or Matt, which I did not have any feeling of association to myself. I just felt that cultural difference such as this case must be tolerated in the country of liberty. The idea of having an English name to fit into the local culture appeared an unjustifiable compromise to dangerous cultural-unification, rather say, “fascism.”.
So I decided to give myself a nickname based on my real name. I did conduct some research over nicknames of resident Japanese celebrities. Some examples showed the patterns of shortening or abbreviating their original names, and other gave non-English names with no meaningful relation with the originals. I thought over and determined to create a non-English name with a little relation with my real name.
So-called Kanji characters are notorious among foreigners studying the Japanese language. They are so because there are countless of them (2000 to 3000) used in the daily communication as well as because they usually have multiple readings.
For example, my name, Masato Ichikawa (actually family name comes first in the Japanese language as Ichikawa Masato.) consists of four Kanji characters. Each of them carries the sound, “Masa,” “To,” “Ichi” and “Kawa.” The meanings of the characters respectively are “Correct,” “Man,” “Market” and “River.” My family name represents “Market River.” And my given name does “Correct Man.” Let’s just take a look at “Ichi” meaning “Market.” If you look up a Japanese dictionary for a word “Market” in Japanese, you will find a word, “Shijou,” in Japanese. “Shijou” consists of two Kanji characters, “Shi” and “Jou.” And the character “Shi” is the one used in my name as “Ichi.” This is the typical case of the problem with the multiple readings that I mentioned.
I am not a linguistic expert. The trick of the multiple readings was roughly like this. Kanji characters started to be introduced to Japan from China more than a thousand years ago. When Kanji first came to Japan, the symbol characters came with its original Chinese pronunciation. Whereas the Japanese language back then had already established as verbal language among Japanese natives. When a Chinese character (or Kanji) meaning “Market” crossed the Japan sea or East China Sea to Japan, the Japanese people learned the character itself as well as the reading (possibly) “Shi.” But the Japanese people had their own language in which “Market” was called “Ichi.” Japanese people then were so adaptable that they started to use Chinese sound for Chinese-originated loan word while they allocate Japanese words for Chinese characters by meanings. This was how one character, meaning “Market,” obtained two readings.
Time went on. Chinese dynasties became replaced one after another. Pronunciation of Chinese characters gradually changed in China. Every time along the history when China and Japan enjoyed cultural intercourse, deformed readings of the characters kept being introduced to Japan. And the once learned Chinese readings of Kanji characters changed also in Japan as more than a thousand years went by.
Take a look at “Masa” meaning “Correct.” Dictionary shows several readings other than “Masa.” “Sei,” “Sho,” “Jou,” and “Tadashii.” I picked the reading “Sho” as my nickname. I told people around me to call me “Sho.” The pronunciation as exactly same as that of “show” sounded easy to Americans. It has some association with the first letter of my given name. The original meaning “Correct” is probably the most suitable for nickname among the four characters in my name. “Sho” got accepted by my friends very quickly.
“Sho” on its look has nothing to do with my name in my passport. I put quotation marks to Sho and placed it between my given name and family name like Masato “Sho” Ichikawa. It indicates that “Sho” is not a middle name but a mere nickname. Even in my college diploma, my name is shown as Masato “Sho” Ichikawa.
My friend called me Sho. They did not have any question about it first. Just only the first while. When they saw me telling my name as “Sho” to the instructor in the first meeting of each class, or when they somehow found my real name, they started to ask me what actually Sho is. Explaining what it is was more complex than teaching how to pronounce “Masato.” I wrote about how I picked the reading of the Kanji for an assignment in the Writing class under the subject of “Informative Report.” I got B+. I redid it and brought it around with me all the time. I made whoever asked about “Sho” read all through my term paper.
The academic performance report for the first term was delivered to me. It showed Masato Q Ichikawa as my name. I found in the end that no one at the registrar’s office could figure out how the enrollment system had obtained the fake initial of my middle name. The lady over the counter, when I first pointed out the error, asked me some questions to figure out what was happening. Her pronunciation was one of the worst one of all. I told her to call me Sho. She was relieved. Then she asked me looking down the student list, “What is your middle name?”
“Uh, I don’t have any.” I answered awkwardly to the yet-unaccustomed question.
“What? Your middle name?” She repeated the question probably because she thought that I was taking her wrong. I was kind of confused and tried to negate her common sense that every one should have a middle name. I happened to say “None” mistakenly meaning “no name.”
Then she said, “Your middle name is Nun?” It sounded like some Vietnamese name but meant obviously funny. I said to her, “No. No middle name.”
She asked me back, “You don’t have a middle name. Then what is Sho?” I showed my term paper to her. She read it carefully. She turned to me and proposed.
“I understand that ‘Sho’ is your nickname meaning ‘Correct.’ And you don’t have a middle name. But unfortunately, the system here is not quite internationalized. It can’t leave the field for the middle name initial blank. Why don’t you put Sho in it. I don’t see any problem doing that.”
At the end of my second term, another GPA report was distributed. It showed my name as Masato S. Ichikawa on the cover. Creating a nickname for myself was indeed a exhausting process.