After that, I of course asked M what his name was. This may shock some of you, but M's name is not really M. It doesn't even start with the letter M. M's real name has two syllables, the second syllable of which is actually a pretty common American name. M introduced himself to me with this very common name.
It's difficult to explain this without an example, so let's assume that his name is Amir-Jaan. (I don't think Amir-Jaan is really even a name, it's just a combination of the name Amir and "Jaan" which means Life and is very commonly used as a loving nickname, and is sometimes included in a person's name.) He was afraid I wouldn't be able to pronounce the full name, or maybe that I'd be scared off by the foreign-ness of his real name, so instead he just introduced himself to me as John. I actually asked him how he spelled his name even, because there are a couple of different spellings of John. I was like, "How do you spell it? Is it John, or Jon like in Jonathan? Or maybe the French spelling, Jean?" and he said "None of those, I spell it Jaan!" and I said "Oooooh. Aren't you different?"
I called him John for several days until on one of our meetings that first week, I asked to see the inside of his wallet and got a peak at his driver's license. At first I was confused, but luckily M was able to explain the situation to me before I got up and walked out of the restaurant. But it had already stuck in my head, and also I just assumed that he still wanted to be called by this nickname. When he explained the wallet thing, he didn't indicate that he didn't want to be called John anymore. So I continued to call him John. Six weeks after we met, I introduced him to my parents. As John. It was only two months later, when I'd invited him to attend my family's Thanksgiving dinner, that I asked him "Do you prefer to be introduced as John or as Amir-Jaan?" that the truth came out.
No one had ever called him John before. He'd invented that nickname on his own when I asked his name. His family didn't call him that, none of his friends called him that, he didn't think of himself as John. And yes, he said - he would prefer to be introduced to my extended family as Amir-Jaan.
Well, NOW what was I supposed to do? He was John in my head. My parents called him John. All my friends called him John! And now he wanted a late-in-the-game name change?
I did introduce him that way, but of course it didn't take. Even if I said "This is Amir-Jaan," I still talked about him as John. I would say "John, could you pass me that plate?" Of course all those John references would overshadow that first lone initial Amir-Jaan introduction.
My friends and family still call him the Americanized nickname. I could never really get around it either. The full name just sounded weird coming out of my mouth when I was talking TO him, and when I was talking ABOUT him, I still called him the nickname. The only solution for me came soon after we were married, I somehow settled on the nickname "Mian." It means husband, and sometimes desi women use that as a nickname instead of calling their husbands by their first names.
Mian has been pretty useful for us. It's endearing to his family, who think it's cute that this white American girl calls their son "Mian." It seems like I'm honoring some of their culture. It's now pretty well settled, as if in my mind his first name IS Mian. He's even listed in my cell phone contacts list that way. One day, the husband of one of his cousins actually told me I should call him Mian-JEE (the jee part adding even more respect to the nickname) or even Sartaj (meaning crown, as if he is my king) rather than just simply calling him Mian.
Yeah, right!
So now you know when the M comes from!
11 comments:
Sartaj? He must have been joking.
Is M a Mian? As in Mian Nawaz Sharif?
Unfortunately, this guy was NOT joking. He's just an idiot. M does stand for Mian, which is what I call him. But it's not actually his name...
I call my husband by his first name and sometimes people are surprised. Why is it only a woman has to respect her husband and call him "Jee" or "Saab" or even Mr. insert last name here but the man can go "hello!" "eh" as my loving DH tends to do. My mother has never called my dad by his name, only "hun" and while I call my husband hun also, I refer to him by his name too. It's not a sign of disrespect. I guess we are just from a different generation!
I call my DH Mian, too and he calls me Begum. I don't know why, it just ended up that way. I also call him baba, which is what our kids say. Or sometimes miaown like a cat just for fun. But he pretty much only calls me Begum.
My parents and grandma have SUCH a hard time with DH's name, too. It really isn't a difficult name, and all the phonemes in his name exist in English!
I am h.o.o.k.e.d.
I'm new to your blog but I have read ALL your posts already. Reason being (aside from your very interesting writing style) is that a Desi bro proposed a few months ago. my parents aren't taking it very well. His parents are keen to push for the nikka. Cultural barriers all the way. And i dread to think that I might not end up as lucky as you to have such lovely in laws.
But really .. thanks for all this info. It's a real help.
mian is also a popular surname in pakistan... which is where mian nawaz sharif comes from... and yes... sometimes surnames come b4 the name in pakistan... lol
We had the name issue too, because my husband went by Syed (which is not even really a name), instead of his actual name when talking to Americans, because he thinks his actual name is too hard (he does have a hard time with it, people usual have to ask him to repeat it three or four times). I had to transition between Syed and his real name too, and get my family to understand it. Now I call him by his real name, or sometimes baba or abba now that we have a kid. He jokes around about that sirtaj thing too. When he said it in front of his mom that I should call him that, she shot him down real fast. I love his mom, she sticks up for me more than him, ha ha!
mian is actually very cute. my grandma used to call my grandad 'sarkar' which is very cute as well (atleast I found it really cute)....hmmm, perhaps i should ask my fiance if i could call him mian after our marriage
My DB* goes by John in his American life, because the last syllable of his name sounds somewhat similar to John. I actually met him through another desi, so I knew him first by his real name. I call him either depending on my mood (although sometimes I just call him "Pumpkin" and "Peanut" and stuff, mostly to irritate him).
His bro often calls him Johnny. I think it's a common for men of that age to have those sort of filmi nicknames. (For example, I also knew a Vikram who was known to his desi friends as Vicky, and a Rikesh/Ricky.)
*desi boyfriend
Oh that's RIGHT! I forgot about Vicky..I racked my brain to try and think of some kind of example without giving away my own husband's name and I forgot, but I do know a couple of Vickys.
When Good Man emailed me for the first time (we met online) he said "My name is [Korean name here] but you can call me Daniel."
I wrote back, "Your name is not Daniel, I will call you [Korean name]."
Later, his job wanted him to choose an "American" (English) name because he was doing English-language tech support. I was spitting angry. He's not American. He's Korean. His name is Korean. (On top of it, the vast majority of people he was supporting were ALSO speaking English as a second language. Why pretend we're all something when we're not???)
Korean names aren't even hard--they're traditionally TWO syllables long. His syllables are a common English noun and a common English name put together. Not hard!
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