the naming game

This weekend I met Hank. Hank is from Taiwan.

It’d probably be more accurate to say that I met “Hank” because, as you might guess, that’s not the Taiwanese name he was given at birth, but rather the name of a white man sewn on his back, so to speak.

Gladish Community Center was the site of the local Taiwanese New Year celebration this weekend, and as I had my palm read, drank bubble tea, and wandered around the room, I met other Taiwanese students who introduced themselves as “Emma,” “Mike,” and “Anna.” It felt a bit odd, but I decided to simply liken it to how we chose Spanish names in ninth grade Spanish class (I was “Amada”). The only difference in this scenario is that this isn’t a classroom where they spend 50 minutes a day – this is their life! We’re messing with history and identities here! Who forced that old guy's name on this young man! This is assimilation and appropriation at its worst, I thought.

Suddenly, I had an urge to go around the room and ask everyone their “real” names (don’t worry, I didn’t). Sure, I might butcher some pronunciations on the first, second, and fifth attempts, but at least we’ll be working within their contexts and respecting their traditions, I thought. And, yes, I realize that we’re in Small Town America, but if they should feel free to bust out their birth names anywhere, shouldn’t it be at the local Taiwanese New Year celebration?? To my mind, I was witnessing what Lyon’s (quoting David Wallace Adams) described as “yet another deplorable episode in the long and tragic history of [insert your non-Euro-American culture of choice here] white relations” (449). It was another example of “the eradication of all traces of tribal identity and culture, replacing them with the commonplace knowledge and values of white civilization” (449).

And then, thanks to Lyons, I chilled out a bit. As he dug into his meaning of rhetorical sovereignty, he showed me that it is entirely wrapped up in the idea that the people have the power. That’s the whole point. What they do with that power is their “pursuit of self-determination” (449). So, I realized that my modern-day example of Taiwanese graduate students in the U.S. differs greatly from Luther Standing Bear’s account of American Indian children being forced to choose a white man’s name from the blackboard. On a basic level, the power dynamics are vastly different. Additionally, I know next to nothing about these Taiwanese grad students, and here I was, assuming that someone forced these names down their throats, as happened in Standing Bear’s story. I mean, for all I know, “Hank” chose “Hank” on his own accord, with no prodding from anyone, as a way of creating a new layer to his identity and practicing counter-/cross-appropriation. Though it looked to me like he was doing anything but reviving his past, perhaps that’s exactly what he’d say he was doing, as well as reviving his possibilities (449). Maybe choosing “Hank” was a way of determining his communicative needs in this new place because he didn’t want to hear dumbos like me (i.e. well-intentioned white liberals) butcher his birth name... again. Maybe this was his way of claiming rhetorical sovereignty in his “public pursuit of recognition” (465).

As Lyons asserts, rhetorical sovereignty is “the beacon by which we seek the paths to agency and power and community renewal” (449), and if someone feels more powerful appropriating a traditionally white guy’s name, then he should feel free to do so… without my impositions, assumptions, and simplifications. Let "Hank" be Hank.

Lyons (beautifully) ends his piece by painting the complexity that answers the question “Is it right for me to take a white man’s name?” His reply: “a No over there can sometimes enable a Yes over here. The ability to speak both—indeed at all—is the right and the theory and the practice and the poetry of rhetorical sovereignty”… “I speak. I speak like the people with whom I live” (211).

I still have plenty of questions about the power dynamics wrapped up in this naming game, but for now I’ll just let them simmer…