Wo Shi Laowai – Wo Pa Shui

*** The MyLaowai Charity Appeal – Read All About It Here ***

*** The MyLaowai Charity Appeal – Read All About It Here ***

Some people just have it easy, I guess. Take people from Britain (the only country that is Great), for example: there are hundreds of thousands of family names in use. Or the United States of Awesome (as they refer to themselves), which is home to even more, although I am the first to admit that some of them are a bit weird and quite a lot are Spanish. Yup, when it comes to family names, some places are blessed indeed. And it’s the same for first names – hell, most countries have so many names available that many parents are able to give their children a middle name as well! I even knew a bloke who had two middle names!

But not everyone is so fortunate. If you’re Hebrew (which is Phoenician), for instance, then you don’t have any written vowels. Which sucks, quite frankly. It sucks bad. Why? Because you are very limited in the names you have available to you. Sorry about that. But it isn’t any better if you’re Welsh, because then you not only have no vowels, you also come from Wales. Yeah, I know. I’m sorry. Sixty-eight percent of all Russians are called “Boris“, “Mikhail“, “Svetlana“, “Viktoria“, “Olga“, “Ekaterina“, “Yuliya“, or “Alina“. Some Eastern European countries are in fact so short of vowels that the citizens have to queue for days just to get temporary use of one, and their governments impose rationing and tight restrictions on how they can be used, in order to prevent unnecessary wear and tear.

On the other hand, being poor isn’t always a bad thing, and even the poorest people in these poor nations can usually make do with improvised names. What may appear to you and I to be a collection of letters left over at the end of a game of Scrabble, might very well be used by an imaginative Welshman or Pole to create a proper family name, for instance.

But the people I really feel sorry for, the ones who really do have a problem with an under-supply of names, are the Chinese. A billion-and-a-half of the blighters, and the merest handful of names shared between the lot of them. Most villages are so short of family names that they all share the same one, which is nice if you don’t want to have to change your name when you get married (to your cousin, for instance), but it can be a real problem otherwise. Even the very rich are gripped in the poverty of not having enough names to go around: if you are a Li, Chen, Huang, Zhang, Wang, Chou or Liu, then you know what I’m talking about. And if you are Chinese, then you are a Li, Chen, Huang, Zhang, Wang, Chou or Liu, because those are your only choices.

It’s not a lot better for first names, either. In fact, it’s even worse. Chinese people don’t have any first names. Their parents (or the Party) simply name them after the first thing that pops into their tiny minds, such as “Ice Ice” or “Defend The Country” or “Gold Set” for instance. In desperation, many Chinese people use English words to give themselves an approximation of identity or uniqueness – “Volcano”, for instance, or “Lily”, “Echo”, and even “Potato” are all common. Names that would be used by strippers in Las Vegas are all-too-common as well, but perhaps there’s another reason for that.

We in the mighty West sometimes forget how fortunate we are. We have an abundance, a surfeit, a vast plethora, a giant, swelling, rich prosperousness of names – easily enough for everyone. Enough for everyone to have three, five, eight, as many, in fact, as we can remember. Just ask “Adolph Blaine Charles Daivid Earl Frederick Gerald Hubert Irvin John Kenneth Lloyd Martin Nero Oliver Paul Quiney Randolph Sherman Uncas William Xerxes Yancy Zeus Wolfeschlegelsteinhausenbergerdorft Senior“, if you don’t believe me.

The people of poor China, however, are not so fortunate, and it is our moral obligation, our solemn duty, to help them. Let us, therefore, once again take up the White Man’s Burden and bring Enlightenment to the Dark Places of the world. MyLaowai is calling on you to donate names for the Chinese to use. We are not asking you to give until it hurts, only what you can spare and won’t miss. Be honest folks, we all have enough, indeed we have more than enough. Show why it is that we are better than anyone else by giving generously in this most worthy of causes.

Thank you. Thank you so much.