So re: name discourse, I should say that I do in fact have a "Chinese name" that is, in the most technical sense, my "real birth name" (as in I had it before my parents decided on what my name in English would be) And I don't want people to use it
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Anyway that's my very small personal contribution to this Discourse about "real names" and pseudonyms I haven't actually had much occasion to use different names in different contexts but everyone from an immigrant culture knows that it's a Thing and that it's personal
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I'm very big on Asian representation and on being proud of where I come from but I'd still experience someone *demanding* my "real name" from me or rewriting my life story to use my "real name" as a hugely invasive, presumptuous act
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Of course he wasn’t named “Lorre” on his birth certificate any more than Peter Lorre was, Charlie Sheen isn’t “Charles” or “Sheen” on his. There are really three things here: dead-naming, name-butchering, and what really makes Asians special, name-doubt. Most non-Anglo non-German
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Americans (and many German -Americans) have family names that are at best approximations of their ancestral family names, like Trump for Drumpf. But no one looks at them and asks what their “real” names are.
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There’s this weird tradition in modern American Judaism where you get a Hebrew name that sounds like or has a similar meaning to your English name. But we don’t do much with it. It’s kind of like picking your name in Spanish class in high school.
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We use them whenever we’re called to the Torah, and if people pray for us when we’re sick, and a lot of other things. And that double name tradition has been around for centuries in some Jewish communities.
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This is exactly what came to mind as I was reading this. Lots of my friends have an English name on their birth certificates and a Hebrew name that's used for ritual purposes. (My folks just gave my sibs and me Hebrew names for both, I did the same with my kids.)
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I can attest to this. My display name is my Hebrew name, but the only person to use it in secular contexts has been my Lubavitcher aunt. It’s just a nice way to both signal my Jewishness on here and have a little more anonymity.
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Yes! I think the one and only time anyone other than my grandmother ever spoke my Hebrew name to me was at my bat mitzvah. And yet, my grandmother would still regularly remind me that that was my name.

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Mazel tov!
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