<p>I wouldn’t be so sure it is a ridiculous assertion. That resume call back study in Toronto (which has a decent Asian Canadian population) does hint at such racial discrimination existing in employment. Of course, it is a lot easier to find that there exists covert racial discrimination in a population than it is to pinpoint particular actors of such, prove or disprove its existence in a specific case, or determine if any given person was actually significantly affected by such racial discrimination.</p>
<p>Of course, this does not necessarily mean that the OP’s “solution” would be effective. If a hiring manager were really (covertly) racist against Asian people, the OP could conceivably get a call for an interview that would really be a waste of time for him, since such hiring manager would not hire him.</p>
<p>However, it is worth noting that the fact that employers typically provide medical insurance to employees creates a conflict of interest with respect to these illegal to ask questions – an employer (at least if it is small) has financial incentive to favor healthy employees who are less likely to get pregnant or have a spouse get pregnant in order to keep its medical insurance costs down.</p>
<p>Also, some people put the answers to these types of questions on their resumes. For example, they may indicate their citizenship status (presumably if it is favorable for work authorization), honorable discharge from military service, membership in groups that hint at religion, ethnicity, or sexual orientation, etc… Back to the original topic, one’s name can give a hint about one’s gender and ethnicity, although it is not completely reliable.</p>
<p>My comments weren’t directed at the interview, rather I was referring to inquiries and assumptions that may be made about OP once she is in the workplace if she changes her name to Andersen.</p>
<p>If OP does change her name to Jane Andersen and submits a resume, most people will assume that she is female and non-Asian before they meet her.</p>
<p>Bay, I agree the question would probably come up casually from coworkers, but I think “my original name was hard to spell” would be a sufficient answer. Or even just “I really liked this name” or “this is the last name of my favorite actor.” Not really that strange in this day and age. I knew a guy who legally changed his name to Optimus Prime.</p>
<p>I don’t know anyone who changed his/her name other than after marriage, but of course there may be hundreds of people I know who did change their names before I met them.</p>
<p>but would you still feel like, well, “you” if you invent a new name and get the job and have to respond to your boss and coworkers calling you by a name that isn’t really you?</p>
<p>Immigrants whose names were originally in a language written in something other than the Latin alphabet may end up effectively changing their names when they are written in the Latin alphabet, as typical American English speakers may pronounce them differently from how they are pronounced in the original language.</p>
<p>Some immigrants add on a common (in American English usage) name to their names due to their actual names being difficult to pronounce recognizably by American English speakers.</p>
<p>Someone estranged from his/her father may choose to change his/her surname to that of his/her mother’s family.</p>
<p>My brother changed his name when he was in the military. Our last name was that of my fathers stepfather. Our father died in his early 40’s, but my brother had apparently known than our dad had wanted to change his name back to his birth fathers, who he had been in contact before his death.</p>
<p>I used to hyphenate my married name, but I changed my middle name to my maiden name. My married name is scandinavian( but still was changed to an American spelling), but also could be Jewish. ( or native American- we get all kinds of misspellings) </p>
<p>Two of my Korean friends changed their first names to something more American. True story. They changed their names to Pepe & Boris.
;)</p>
<p>Relatives of a neighbor (with difficult Italian name) decided to change their last name to something that was entirely different from their original name. When you can choose any last name in the universe, what would you choose? Something classy…something pronounceable…something spellable?</p>
<p>I was listening to “Candle in the Wind” this morning and it made me remember that Marilyn Monroe changed her name for her job (originally being named Norma Jean Mortenson). :)</p>
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<p>Great question. I like my name, last and first, but I’ve never really thought about what I’d choose if I didn’t.</p>
<p>My grandmother hated her first name–I can’t even remember what it was because no one referred to her by it–and went by her middle name.</p>
<p>My firm hires many people who are East Asian. There have been more than several in the last few years who have changed either first or last names for ease of pronunciation. One has a first name that is another word for feces in English and actually put a variation on the resume even though the transcript and immigration documents said something else. Under the circumstances it made a lot of sense.</p>
<p>A friend was born with a very Jewish-sounding, polysyllabic last name that, unfortunately, lent itself to a rather nasty nickname that hounded him through his youth. He went to college and law school in the CUNY system, then got a job with a government agency, and achieved a very responsible mid-level position there quite young. When he decided to enter the private sector – noncoincidentally, around the time he and his wife started thinking about kids – he decided to change his name to something shorter and more neutral.</p>
<p>Fast forward about 18 years. He was a mid-level, underappreciated partner in a specialty area at a local firm with mainly Jewish lawyers and clients, and in part because of the quality of his work and in part because of lucky timing he was negotiating to jump to a national, white-shoe, high-prestige, but traditionally very, very WASPy firm. When his deal came up for a partnership vote, the dean of the firm’s practice in that area, who was semi-retired, based in Washington, and had not been involved in any prior discussions, objected to the proposal. “This man is a fraud!,” he said. “He says he spent years in an important role at the government agency I know like the palm of my hand, and I have never heard of him. He is either a liar or a complete nonentity.” That brought things to a complete halt, until finally someone who had also come over from the same firm a few years earlier said, “I think he may have changed his name when he left the government. His old name may have been something like B_________.”</p>
<p>“B__________ ?!” the senior partner thundered. “This is J____ B__________ ? He’s a great lawyer, one of the best! I have always wondered what happened to him. We should have hired him years ago!”</p>
<p>He has been successful at that firm beyond his wildest dreams, or theirs.</p>
<p>This reminds me of one of my Chinese grad student friends trying to figure out what “American” name he wanted to go by. We had a hard time talking him out of Anferny.</p>
<p>It makes a lot of sense to change one’s name because it is difficult to spell. Honestly, if someone gave me the other two answers, I would think they were really weird.</p>
<p>OP might fare the best if she changes Soong to something close but more “white” sounding, if that is her goal. Something like Sonnington or Sonsmith, maybe.</p>
<p>My boss is an East Asian man. His first name is a very common female first name here and his last name is a familiar Italian word (think similar to pronto), so people are always expecting an Italian woman. It actually causes him all sorts of problems when traveling because with his passport history and strange name, Homeland Security is always on his case.</p>
<p>Someone quoted a statistic many pages ago that Asians (or some subgroup) make up 4% of the population yet comprise 21% of the UG population. I’m no mathematician but the OP claimed that was misleading because they still have a lower acceptance rate. Am I missing something? Doesn’t that imply that they actually had a much higher acceptance rate. </p>
<p>Also, I get stared at all the time. People actually even often point at me when they don’t think I can see them. I’m so relieved to now know that it is because I somehow either look Asian or people assume I have an Asian name, even though I am as white-bread as they come. </p>
<p>As for the OP: I have read many of your other threads and have to say that surgery is the best option, but not for your eyes etc. I would find a good plastic surgeon to remove the chip from your shoulder.</p>
<p>The claim is that, for similar academic qualifications<em>, Asian applicants have a lower acceptance rate at the most selective universities using opaque holistic admissions. How true it is, and (if true) whether it is due to (covert) discrimination explicitly</em>* against Asian applicants is something that can be debated for hundreds of posts of strident claims with no resolution, since only those on the inside would know for sure, and even if someone actually were discriminating against Asian applicants, s/he would not admit it.***</p>
<p>*Asian high school students do tend to have higher academic achievement and therefore greater qualification to colleges. This is likely because the immigration system does have some preference for educated and skilled workers who encourage their kids to achieve in school, and those who immigrate from distant places tend to be relatively motivated to begin with. Other similar immigrant groups display similar characteristics, but they may not be visible in the way that Asian immigrants are when people look only through racial lenses.</p>
<p>**Of course, there could also be admissions factors at some schools that, although not specifically discrimination against Asian applicants, could reduce the admissions rate among those with similar academic qualifications. Examples include legacy preference at schools with historically few Asian students, “too many piano and violin players”, etc…</p>
<p>***Although there are a few (not admissions officers) who have posted here in favor of racial quotas to limit Asian enrollment.</p>
<p>My parents gave me an English name to go with my Chinese one for ease of pronunciation and to “fit in” better with the American mainstream. </p>
<p>In my late adolescence/adulthood, I’ve actually have made it a point to use both names as a point of pride. My Chinese name tended to get used alongside my English name on a lot of serious stuff like undergrad academic work, correspondence with Chinese/Chinese-Americans, and on one occasion, a non-Chinese employer who didn’t seem to have an issue with the fact I used both names. </p>
<p>On the other hand, despite widespread perceptions by many…including here on CC that we live in a “post-racial society”, one only needs to observe the Vincent Chin murder in 1982 or the much more recent open displays of racism by those resentful of the fact we have a first non-White president, vicious racist bullying of Pvt. Danny Chen by higher ranking solders in Afghanistan or the shooting of Sikhs by a confirmed White supremacist neo-nazi sympathizer as 3 cases of why this is not the case.</p>
<p>My grandfather’s family changed their name. The original name was a name that is means something very unfortunate in English. I’ll use the word slop as a stand-in, but the actual word is far more unfortunate. In the original Polish/ Russian, it was Slopcki, which “Americanizes” to Slopski. They decided to go for broke and use the Yiddish/ German version which was … Slopsker. Uh, you didn’t really help your cause here, folks!</p>
<p>Another branch did get the picture and Americanize to Sloan. That’s better.</p>