Call Me Kathy Please

Choiying Tam (Kathy)

Call Me Kathy Please

            My name is Choi Ying Tam. Tam is my family name, and Choi Ying is my first name. In Chinese culture, we do not have a middle name. When I was a child, I was always curious about where my name came from, and my mother told me that my father picked it for me. I asked my father about it, but he totally forgot why he chose this name for me.

            Why do I want to know about my name? Besides that it explains who am I, another main reason is I do not like to introduce my name to people. One character in my name, remind people of a bad attitude of an animal, and some people like to make fun of it. I remember when I was a child, my friends and my classmates always called me a nickname to instead my real name. I have been called an ugly nickname, since I went to the Kindergarten. My classmates used to call me nickname very loudly and laughed very hard.

            When I was in high school, I worked some part time jobs. Every time I introduced my real name to people, they always easily formed a nickname. Therefore, when my English teacher who asked us to pick an English name for the class in high school, I picked Kathy for myself. I forgot why I chose this name, but I remember that I just wanted to have a different name to avoid being called my nickname again. Now, I would like to introduce myself as Kathy Tam to everybody more than my original name, Choi Ying Tam.