Names and Selves: Transnational Identities and Self-Presentation among Elite Chinese International Students

Abstract

What accounts for name choices in a transnational context? What does the choice of ethnic or English names reveal about global identities and the desire to fit into a new culture? Drawing on the sociology of culture and migration, we examine the intersection of naming, assimilation, and self-presentation in light of international student mobility. Based on 25 semi-structured interviews with mainland Chinese students enrolled in an elite Midwestern university, we find that these students make name choices by engaging in both transnational processes and situated practices. First, Chinese international students negotiate between multiple names to deal with ethnic distinctions. While ethnic names can signal distance from other ethnic communities, they also distinguish individuals from others. For these students, names are multi-layered and temporal: their name choices evolve throughout school lives, shaped by power relations in American cultural contexts and channeled by images of their home country. Second, multiple names allow these students to practice situated performance, incorporating the reflective self, the distinctive self, and the imagined self. We address "cross-cultural naming" that accounts for identity in transnational social spaces.

Globalizing the sociology of the arts and culture: East Asian perspectives

“…The most effective way to diversify the field would be by flooding it with a wide range of voices and experiences. Many other compelling studies located in the East Asian context direct our attention to themes such as occupational identities among Korean poets, Chinese painters, and Japanese musicians Zhang 2015;Kowalczyk 2022); galleries, art markets, and the materiality aspect of exhibitions (Zhang 2020(Zhang , 2022; emotions in reality TV shows (Wei 2014); naming culture (Obukhova et al 2014;Fang and Fine 2020); fashion and fast fashion (Zhao 2013; Chu 2018); grassroots branding (Zemanek 2018); the visual arts in the middle-class home (Fang 2018); and local receptions of American television (Gao 2016). As creative cultures continue to emerge and evolve in the region, it is imperative that we expand the scope of empirical studies to incorporate these diverse and exciting experiences.…”

Portraying the ‘Chinese international students’: a review of English-language and Chinese-language literature on Chinese international students (2015–2020)

“…Both papers offered critiques of the problematic, colonial nature of media and academic representations of the Chinese international students in the American context. Additionally, an emergent group of empirical work directly engages with the Chinese international students’ racialised experiences, either as victims of neo-racism and the ‘other’ in American colleges (Yao, 2018), or as informed agents of naming practices demonstrating acute racial and ethnic awareness of what names meant for their ethnic identities (Fang & Fine, 2020 ).…”

An Analysis of Chinese International Students’ Acculturative Strategies in Western Universities

“…However, as numerous surveys, questionaries, interviews, and quantitative studies have suggested, the integration path contains many obstacles, and Chinese international students' level of success in integration is mixed. On the one hand, some students experience successful integration, in which they recognize the importance of preserving their own identities while also accepting the norms of mainstream society [9]. In a qualitative study of the relationship between Chinese international students' use of English names, assimilation, and self-presentation, Fang and Fine argues that for students who dropped their English names, their ethnic names serve as a representation of their unique Chinese identity compared to other groups in the host society [9].…”

“…On the one hand, some students experience successful integration, in which they recognize the importance of preserving their own identities while also accepting the norms of mainstream society [9]. In a qualitative study of the relationship between Chinese international students' use of English names, assimilation, and self-presentation, Fang and Fine argues that for students who dropped their English names, their ethnic names serve as a representation of their unique Chinese identity compared to other groups in the host society [9]. Such demonstration can be viewed as a form of successful integration.…”

“…Such demonstration can be viewed as a form of successful integration. Take the experience of Dawei, a Chinese international student who dropped his English name, David, as an example [9]: "In college, I realized many Davids I knew are Jewish. I think David is a very Jewish name.…”