A Series of Cultures and Phonemes: Names in a Multicultural Society Part 2

Written by Joanne Villavieja

Today we live in a vastly multicultural society, where many families consist of multiple ethnic backgrounds. According to the 2020 Census, the multiracial population increased from 2.9% of the generational US population in 2010 (about 9 million people) to 10.2% (33.8 million people) in 2020. In part one of this series, we discussed the most common combination of races: White and another race. The White and Asian population saw an increase of 65.8%, about 1.1 million people since 2010. For AAPI Heritage Month and part two of this series, we will look at names combining White and Asian cultures.

As discussed in “A Series of Cultures and Phonemes: Names in a Multicultural Society Part 1”, a name is easily shared between languages when it can be pronounced easily and has a good meaning in both languages. For some languages this is easier than others, and that has to do with their shared phonemes. In linguistics, phonemes are defined as the smallest units of sound in a language that carry meaning. For example, the phoneme /d/ is the sound that distinguishes the word “dog” from “bog”, “log”, and “cog”. Phonology is the study of these sound systems in languages. To be able to analyze why some names “work” in multiple languages and some do not, phonology is used to describe how the names are written and pronounced in each language setting. It’s basically like taking an inventory of the different “sound vocabularies” and seeing which ones are shared.

This article by Cameron Smith, does an in-depth, quantitative analysis of which languages share the most phonemes with English, an unexpected one being Tagalog, the native language of the Philippines. Here is a quick example of a name that does not work well between these two language settings. The name “Lola” has elegant connotations in English and Spanish, originally deriving from the name Dolores, which is part of the Spanish title for the Virgin Mary: “Nuestra Señora de los Dolores” or “Our Lady of Sorrows”. A graceful and inherently feminine name that is perfect for women. However, in Tagalog (an unfortunate case since the Philippines is predominantly Catholic) the name “Lola” sounds exactly like the word “Grandma”. Not as ideal for a young girl’s name. If they eventually grow old and have a family of their own, they’ll be referred to as “Lola Lola”.

Deciding on a name in a language that is character-based like Chinese, Japanese, and Korean has the added layer of having to choose characters with significant meaning. These three languages all use Chinese characters for names, of which there are over 50,000. Many of them are homophones and share exact pronunciations, so there are seemingly endless options for meanings. This can be convenient but also daunting for something as important as a name.

Most English names contain sounds that do not exist in Chinese phonology, and have to be pronounced using the closest approximations. For example the name “Darwin” often is pronounced as “Dá ěr wén”, written 达尔文. These characters have meanings on their own, but don’t have much significance when put together. Here are some examples of names that have plausible phonemes in both English and Chinese, and also are commonly written with characters with good meanings. The name “Kylie” can be written as “凯莉”, the characters for which mean “victory” and “jasmine”.  The name “Eugene” is commonly written as “尤金” which contains the character “金” for “gold”.

An example of English names that are not as simple to transliterate into other languages are the particularly long ones like “Alexandra” or “Christopher”. These names also contain sounds that don’t typically exist in Asian languages like the ones represented by “x” or “-pher”. Japanese usually replaces that “x” sound with “kusu” and “-pher” with “faa”. Written in Hiragana (the Japanese alphabet for words of non-Japanese origin), these 4 (al-ex-an-dra) and 3 (kris-tuh-fer) syllable names now become 7 (アレクサンドラ) and 6 (クリストファー) syllables respectively. A safe rule of thumb would be that the longer a name is, the more difficult it would be to pronounce in another language, particularly Asian ones. Most names that work well in multiple Asian languages along with English, are easily shareable due to their length or simple pattern of consonants followed by vowels.

Hopefully these examples can help give some ideas for growing and future multicultural Asian families. Even branching beyond the family context, and into a marketing and mass media focus, understanding how names can be perceived in more than one cultural setting can help lead to more mindful choices. To conclude, here are some more examples of commonly used English given names that work well (can be easily pronounced, or are already popular) in various Asian languages:

English-Chinese names: Lily, Kailin, Hailey, Wendy, Anna, Owen, Allan, Jason, Ray, Dan, Ben

English-Indian names: Anita, Mina, Rita, Rina, Tara, Meera, Deven, Jay, Ash, Niel, Avi

English-Filipino names: Elena, Marie, Jocelyn, Princess, Gemma, Joyce, April, Jeremy, Jan, Joel, Edwin, Alvin

           *A caveat to Filipino-American first names is that English names are already commonly used, but that often they are combined into two-part first names (John Mark, April Joyce, Marie Lynn, etc.) and males will often go by its initials (JR, MJ, AJ, etc.).

English-Vietnamese names: Kim, May, Lillian, Lin, Lana, Vivian, Jenny, Kevin, Liam, Cam, Luke, Lee, Dan

English-Korean names: Grace, Gina, Hannah, Anna, Mina, Jean, Jason, Dan, Ian, Eugene, Noah, June, David

English-Japanese names: Erika, Naomi, Mika, Sarah, Anna, Kylie, Rina, Ken, Gene, Joe, Kent, Toby, Kai, Luka

For more insights on name usage and connecting to your audience of varying demographics, be sure to use E-Tech’s data-driven, multicultural marketing software to stay up to date!

A Series of Cultures and Phonemes: Names in a Multicultural Society Part 1

By Joanne Villavieja

In 1967, the Supreme Court officially legalized interracial marriage in the United States. According to the Pew Research Center, 1 in 6 marriages in 2015 were people married to someone of a different race or ethnicity. The article states: “This reflects a steady increase in intermarriage since 1967, when just 3% of newlyweds were intermarried.” For metropolitan areas, this statistic is even higher. Because of their diversity, places such as Honolulu, HI and Las Vegas, NV, have intermarriage rates as high as 42% and 31%, respectively. Pew Research has also provided an interactive map that shows areas of the US that have the highest and lowest rates of intermarriage, along with a chart that describes that percent for specific race categories. For example, in Honolulu, 34% of White people and 32% of Asians are married to someone outside of their race. In Las Vegas, 26% of White people and 30% of Hispanics are married to someone outside of their race.

What do these statistics mean? Clearly intermarriages have become way more popular within the past 50-60 years. Because of this, the picture of the modern-day family is now more diverse than it once was. In 2015, one-in-seven U.S. infants (14%) were multiracial or multiethnic, according to Pew’s analysis of Census Bureau data. These days, several cultures often come together under one household, and one of the ways that you can spot this is in the way children are named. Parents coming from different cultures may want to have those identities represented in the names of their child or children.          

“How does one come up with a multicultural name?” Common considerations when choosing a name are things like: Does it sound nice? Does it have a good meaning? What are some possible nicknames? When working with more than one language and culture there are even more questions to think about. Multicultural parents need to ask: “Does this sound nice in both languages? Does it have a good meaning in both languages? Multicultural families tend to have different languages involved in the family’s daily life. Ideally, children’s names should blend easily into these languages. For some languages this is easier than others, and this is because of the phonemes, or the “sound vocabulary” that is shared between them. More on phonemes and which languages share what sounds will be visited in later parts of this series.

According to this article from the Census: “The largest Multiracial combinations in 2020 were White and Some Other Race (19.3 million), White and American Indian and Alaska Native (4 million), White and Black or African American (3.1 million), White and Asian (2.7 million), and Black or African American and Some Other Race (1 million).” The article goes on to talk about how in the 2020 Census, improvements were made to the question design and data processing, allowing for a more accurate portrait of how citizens of the country identify. This revealed that the picture of America is much more diverse than ever anticipated.

Since the majority of the multiracial population according to the 2020 Census were found to be White and American Indian/Alaska Native, this series of delving into multicultural naming will begin with examples of given names that have both English and Native American roots. Here are some popular first names that have roots in both cultures:

“Winona” comes from Sioux origin, meaning “first daughter”.

“Nina” comes from Kichwa origin, meaning “fire”

“Kai” comes from Navajo origin meaning “willow tree”

“Dakota” comes from Sioux origin, meaning “friend”

“Mika” comes from Sioux origin, meaning “raccoon” (also Japanese)

“Poloma” comes from Choctaw origin, meaning “bow” (also works in Spanish)

It can be noted that the last two names from this list are also popular names in Japanese and Spanish (Mexican variant spelling “Paloma”), respectively. Names can have meanings and uses in as many languages as possible, as long as the sounds are shared or at least easily translatable. More examples of this will be discussed in subsequent parts of this series. To learn more about what cultural significance your audience’s names’ can have, use the latest version of the ETech software to help you gain more knowledge in your marketing!