Do you have a name that's difficult to pronounce? Well, Texas State Rep. Betty Brown thinks you need to change it. During a House testimony on voter identification legislation, she suggested that Asian-American individuals should adopt new names. Why? Because their names are too hard to pronounce.
“Rather than everyone here having to learn Chinese — I understand it’s a rather difficult language — do you think that it would behoove you and your citizens to adopt a name that we could deal with more readily here?" said Brown. "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?”
Yuck! I'm not ashamed that I love a little Betty White every now and then, but I don't think I can handle this Betty Brown character.
– Dewitt
hahah….is it me or is everyone in congress totally insane??
they already… do this…
sometimes… >.>
Being a first generation Asian-American I am beyond disgusted by her comment. What the f*@# was she think?
Matt, she is not in the United States Congress; she is in the Texas State Legislature.
There’s no such thing as an “American” name because there all from other countries originally. Americans tend to butcher names when they get to America.
For example the name Søren is pronounced “Sir-en” but when I see Americans with that name it’s butchered to “Sore-n” instead. Chinese is not very hard considering that many Americans can’t even correctly pronounce their own names. Or what is worse is that they will misspell their own names in order to become “Americanized”
Meanwhile, anyone who knows anything about global communication and commerce knows that Chinese is the language of the future, so here’s this backward bitch saying “Rather than learn it, let’s bury it.”
What is in the water down there in Texas, I mean first we had 8 years of George Bush in denial about how bad the economy really is and now we get this backwoods betty thinking this is the solution to peoples names….What’s she thinking?
…how is a name like “Li” or “Meng-lin” hard to pronounce? I’m going to adopt a simple, easy to pronounce and thoroughly american name like Ahuitzotl or Angwusnasomtaqa.
Asians traveling to the US already do it cause they know people have a hard time pronouncing their names, but when it comes to political affairs you must use your paperwork name which is their original name. Btw Wayne you mean Mandarin? there are 5 chinese languages
my mom’s maiden name was le (lay). ok, it’s vietnamese not chinese but really… that’s not very difficult. her adopted name was shrader, good thing the spelling was changed from the original german spelling or we’d have all sorts of confusion. Thank God my dad’s name is Sharp… it makes me a much better american knowing people can pronounce my name.
ok ok… i have a lot more sarcastic remarks that i want to make… but i’m already annoyed enough. wow…
Oh please, Wayne, enough folks that use this site already have enough trouble writing their own language of origin correctly(witness comments above by Somnang(think rather than thinking), Anon (there rather than they’re))plus all the folks in the country who changed Brittany to Britney, and too many other names to mention that have been bastardized simply because folks wanted to make sure that THEIR child’s name was not like anyone else’s. And now you are suggesting that all these folks need to learn Chinese, the second most difficult language to learn (I think I heard somewhere that English is #1, because of all the words spelled the same but pronounced differently, like read and read-present tense and past tense)? I know that I will never be learning any other language than English at age 56, but I suppose many kids in school will do so as a necessity. Let’s concentrate on the fact that this woman wants these folks to CHANGE THEIR NAMES so that WE (meaning SHE) can pronounce them more easily. Would she, then change her name to a more typically Asian name if she were to go to live in an Asian land? NOT!!! These are folks elected to state office, and they actually say these things and mean them, and think they make sense. May as well pack it in folks, the cockroaches will be taking over soon!
PS- I realize that Somnang says that he/she is a first generation Asian American, so I am guessing that she/he was born here and learned English in school.
I think this lil’ ol Betty Brown is on to something. Names can be hard to spell and pronounce, and who wants to go to the effort of even trying?! As a matter of fact, let’s just number people and do away with all names…’cause everyone can pronounce numbers right?! Gosh golly, what would we do without our geniuses like Betty Brown?
They did this to immigrant coming through Ellis Island when it was still open. When the person would say their name, the worker would just write down whatever Americanized version they felt like. Sadly, many of us don’t even realize our true heritage was deformed by the goverment. Betty Brown can go to hell for all I care, that kind of idea has no place in this era!
It was sad and ignorant, but clearly not malicious or hateful if you listen to how she said it rather than just reading what she said.
She probably has a point about pronunciation, though, people with names in other languages should be assigned a standard spelling, and EVERYONE, even with simple names like Smith or Brown, should be forced to spell them for clarity when showing up to vote.
Also being a 1st generation American in my Chinese family, I only have one thing to say to Betty Brown…Eat shit and die!!!