Why do Chinese people change their names and Japanese people do not?

Question

Some people say that Chinese people, when they come to the U.S., will change their names to something America or Western. Japanese people, on the other hand, don't tend to do that (or so say the anecdotes). Why is that?

Answer 1

Chinese are more adaptable to the environments
One additional Christian name to be easily recalled
Why not
There are quite a substantial percentage of Christians in Chinese
Japanese are almost totally non Christian

Answer 2

Being Chinese myself and having lived in japan for a few years... i think i can answer this question. It all really has to do with the differences and similarities between the 3 languages (Chinese, Japanese, and English). Japanese phonetics can be transformed into English easily. When i learned Japanese, they used english pronunciation for japanese words and "letters" called hiraganna and katagana. Chinese is more of a loose phonetic pronounciation using english. THere are different tones and ways of saying a word that don't exactly sound like english phonetics. japanese is pretty exact so it's easy to translate japanese words and names into english. My last name doesn't sound anything like my real chinese name when compared to english. However japanese names really do sound like the way they are spelled in english. So could be ease of translation and pronounciation.

Answer 3

Usually Chinese from Hong Kong or Taiwanese are given two names, a Chinese name and an English name. My roommate in college, who is Chinese American, had two names as well. His father, who is from Hong Kong, was also given two names at birth. It's a cultural thing, due to the fact that Hong Kong used to be a British province, and many of them could not pronounce the Chinese names, so they set standards for the people of Hong Kong to give themselves English names as well.

Answer 4

i think because they are more proud of their names

Answer 5

Japenses pride??????