I have been going by “Chu” for the longest time since high school. Quite frankly, I don’t remember why I did it. But I think it had something to do with a constant reminder for myself not to bring shame to the family name for which I represent. There’s been a few confusions every now and then when people weren’t sure what my first name was, and consequently, the most common joke about my name is, “So your name is Chu Chu?” Hah, real creative.<\/p>\n
Then there are the clever Americans who try to make a joke out of my name. Here’s a few:
\n1. Sneezing: Ah Chu!!
\n2. Object: Hey, Shoe!
\n3. Automotive: Chu Chu Train!
\n4. Star Wars: Chu-bacca (followed by grunt)
\n5. Latino: Chuy
\n6. Action: Chewy, or simply, Chew
\n7. Cartoon: Picca-chu<\/p>\n
Real respectful, jerks… But then it beats having my name spelled wrong altogether (Brian<\/a> complains having his name often misspelled as “b-r-a-i-n”… not cool…).<\/p>\n I also have had a couple of nicknames as a result: Being called “Chu” has been great when I am the one and only “Chu” in the entire school (or among the circle of friends). It’s unique and easy to remember. But ever since moving out to California, it’s a little awkward being called “Chu”. The primary reason is that my mother-in-law’s maiden name is “Chu” as well. And most of Grace’s relatives on her mother’s side live in California. My cousin, Jennifer, also lives here. When there are so many “Chus” around, to be called THE<\/i> Chu is a bit selfish I guess. At my wedding, there were quite a few Chus there. It must’ve been weird and confusing for all our relatives to hear my friends calling me “Hey, Chu, drink up!”… <\/p>\n To remedy the situation, I have started introducing myself to new friends here in California as “Sean” (yeah, as in Sean Connery<\/a>, Kyung). Sean Chu, Shun Chu… sound similar. I can live with that.<\/p>\n The funny thing is, a friend I know from college also started calling himself “Chu” although he did have an English name before (Robert), and he originally started having call him “Piccachu” and even bought domain name<\/a> along with it. So the joke is on him now. Piccachu.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I have been going by “Chu” for the longest time since high school. Quite frankly, I don’t remember why I did it. But I think it had something to do with a constant reminder for myself not to bring shame to the family name for which I represent. There’s been a few confusions every now … Continue reading “What’s in a Name”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-210","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-rant"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p54IqZ-3o","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wiredatom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/210","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wiredatom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wiredatom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wiredatom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wiredatom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=210"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.wiredatom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/210\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wiredatom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=210"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wiredatom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=210"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wiredatom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=210"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n1. Chuy (or Chewy?)
\n2. Chu Chu (most common)<\/p>\n