English names

You might wonder why so many Taiwanese have an English name which is not their real name such as Andy Chen, Amy Liu, Maggie Kuo and so on. It may be because:

1)  It's easy to remember and pronounce for foreign colleagues, and avoids making them feel embarrassed to call us 

2)  It sounds Westerner for those who like Westerner culture
3)  It helps protect their privacy  

4)  It can be used as a nick name
5)  Their mandarin name sounds embarrassing
6)  Some other reason I cannot think of...

I didn't like my original name, which was given to me by my mother. The reason I didn't like it was that the name was too common and it was even ranked on the top 10 tackiest name in my country. I envied people who had a beautiful name that sounded wiser or more elegant. I asked my mom why she gave me this name. She answered that she was in a rush for registering my birth. The truth is always cruel. That's the reason I started using my English name.

I was using my English name until I noticed all my classmates were introducing themselves using their real name, besides some students who were from Taiwan, Hong Kong and Korea. Although some of their names were quite hard to pronounce, I did spent some time to practice them. In fact many friends of mine would rather use my real name than my English name. They explained that my real name meant the real me, and I was really touched by them who tried really hard to practice the correct sound of my name, therefore, I stopped using English name.