what's in a name

there was an letter in the forum pages of the straits times last week where the author commented on the apparent lack of professionalism of channelnewsasia when reporting the 117th international olympic committee session. but enough of that; what caught my eye were the words "timothy goh", buried somewhere in the article.

for those not in the know, timothy go is a news presenter with channelnewsasia, who looks chinese, but is in fact philipino (edit here, and all other instances: filipino; thanks tim (omg!)) (though it is possible that he is chinese filipino - chinese makes up 1.5% of the philippines' population). either the letter-writer or the editor-in-charge of the forum pages had spelt the particular name wrongly. issues of sloppy editing by the straits times aside, my point is that i have little patience for people who misspell names, especially when the spelling of said names could easily been verified via available sources (such as the internet).

one may ask why i seem to make a mountain out of a molehill; it's just a name, for christ's sake. and part of me, the part which wants to bo-chup my life away agrees; why be such a stickler over a seemingly trival issue? but try as i might, i just can't ignore it. spelling a name wrongly ranks pretty high up on my people-who-are-going-to-hell list, and the reason i think that way is because i feel that by getting the other person's name wrong, one shows one's disregard for the other person. of course this henious crime is exacebated manifold by one's insistence in not correcting the error if one has the chance.

so, what's in a name? it is, to me, the embodiment of one's beliefs, cultures and identity. a name may have religious connotations, one example being the name given during baptism; it may shed light on one's race, such as the distinctive japanese surnames; it may be an expression of individuality, evident from the adoption of funky english names such as "fish", popular in hong kong; it may highlight tradition, as the way malay names referencing their father's name does; it may represent change, with the modern woman's hypenated surname or last name; but above all, it is a definition: of the person, of the self. and it is, in most, if not all cases, the most accessible piece of information of a person. thus, is it not a flagrant disregard for the other person when one is casual in the presentation of this piece of information to the point of getting it wrong, especially when used during official business, such as a report in the national newspapers?

the timothy go incident is a case in point: "goh" is a dialect form of the chinese word 吴, which is also one of the major chinese surnames. the spelling "goh" reflects the dialect group of the person; all this is common knowledge, at least to chinese singaporeans. also, it may be the case that "go" was derived from 吴 as well, if timothy is indeed chinese. at first glance, there seems to be no problem; all is well.

however, this difference in spelling hints that timothy is not singaporean - different countries may have romanized the chinese word 吴 differently (and did: the taiwanese "tsing" versus the chinese "qing" for the character 清). with one extra alphabet, timothy's initial projected identity as a filipino (or at the very least, a non-singaporean) has been erased, replaced by a singaporean one. and this is assuming that "go" is derived from 吴; it could very well be from another root, perhaps not even chinese. misspelling timothy's surname as "goh" falsely creates a chinese veneer for him.

what image comes to your mind when you see the name "timothy goh"? do you see a chinese singaporean? or a filipino? what about "timothy go" then? will you think that he is singaporean? or will you question that assumption due to the unusual spelling of the surname?