What's in a name?

I cringed when Kaile called me "Tiong Seng" during a msn chat. It's not that I dislike the name but he has always called me "Changsheng" but since we were talking to June(who knows me by "Tiong Seng") in that conversation so he called me "Tiong Seng" as well.

I have never identified myself with "Tiong Seng" until fairly recently. I believe there is a construction company named "Tiong Seng" (as aptly pointed out by Helen, who remembered my name from our first meeting because she was a civil engineer). I've seen many shops that had variations of that name as well, from "Tong Seng" to "Tiong Sin", from respectable Chinese medicine halls to dodgy little establishments in not very wholesome neighbourhoods, and the sight of these shops using the name never fails to cause a mini-commotion among my friends as we walk past them.

"Tiong Seng" is also, of course, an incredibly beng-ish name. The only names which are more "beng-ish" are probably the archtypical "Ah Beng" and "Ah Seng". I have always liked the name "Changsheng" though, thinking it is pretty unique and there is kind of a nice touch to it. However, I remember there was once when I was browsing through old yellow-papered Chinese books in Bras Besar and the author named a character Cai Changsheng with the exact same Chinese characters as my Chinese name. What's more, that character plays the erhu in the story, and I was playing the erhu as well at that point in my life. Freaked me out a bit back then.

I remember the simpler times back in kindergarten and primary school, when "Changsheng" is my official name in school registers and nobody ever called me "Tiong Seng". Then suddenly, in the early 90s, after I am issued with an IC which says "CHUA TIONG SENG" instead of "CAI CHANGSHENG" I am stuck with teachers calling me by my dialect name instead of my hanyu pinyin name. Well it wasn't a major issue then, since my classmates and friends still call me "Changsheng". And being the well-behaved boy that I was there wasn't much opportunities for teachers to use my dialect name. =) Mrs Wee, my upper sec Maths teacher, loved to emphasize the two velar nasals (for those who are not phonetically-inclined that's the "-ng" sound) in my name, especially when I did not hand in my homework. (Mr Peter Ng, on the other hand, used the much less phonetically challenging name "Boy index no. 7" when I was late in my Physics assignments)

It was the same in JC: teachers call me "Tiong Seng", everyone else calls me "Changsheng". In fact several of my classmates call me "CS". I became known as "Frank" in JC2, because our GP tutor loves to give us monosyllabic English names so that he does not have to struggle with the pronunciation of our names. A sample of other monosyllabic names that he favours:Sam, Bob, Jo etc etc. Of course "Frank" is just a name that I take on for a brief moment in my life; so if you know me as "Frank" you are one of the privileged few. ;p

By the time I am in NS, the balance slowly but surely begins to shift. Sergeants and officers, in their exalted positions, do not have time to bother themselves with correctly pronouncing their subordinates' names. And I wasn't about to tell my CSM that I prefer my Hanyu Pinyin name when he was bellowing at me ("CHUA TIONG SENG!" or just simply "CHUA!" ) Most of my BMT mates call me Changsheng, but in 46SAR a few of my peers are beginning to call me Tiong Seng. I believe this is the first time in my life that I have people I considered friends who address me by that name.

In NUS few people in my classes know my Chinese name. Not surprising, since most of my classmates do not know me long enough to know that name. And I am not going to see most of them after the module ends anyway so I was content to let people call me Tiong Seng. (I was quite a loner in NUS FASS!) People I know from CO, of course, still know me by Changsheng.

However, in my honours year, when my classmates are more or less a permanent fixture since everyone pratically takes the same modules, I'm slowly beginning to identify myself with the name Tiong Seng. By the time I re-enlist in 46 S3 Br I stopped telling people my Chinese name (unless the self-introduction was made in Chinese of course). In fact the abbrievation for my name gradually changed from "CS" to "TS"(I believe Atticus calls me that) without my realization, and the 11 months or so for which I was there was the first time in which I let more people know me by my dialect name instead of my Chinese name. Of course, Jianwei calls me "Changsheng" now and then to freak me out, but by the time I ORD I think I can safely say that I have eased comfortably from being Changsheng to Tiong Seng and have became perfectly fine with both names(unless someone who usually calls me by one name suddenly calls me by the other, as in the case of Kaile and Jianwei) .

Now that I'm in NIE, everyone knows me by Tiong Seng of course, in fact Desi thought "Changsheng" was my nickname...!! . So there you are, the final (maybe?) step in the transformation of my name. So which name do you know me by? Changsheng, Tiong Seng, CS, TS, Frank? Well, if you know me by any other name, then it's a name that I do not officially recognise so you are to stop calling me that name. You are also not to tell others that I have a name other than those that I have mentioned in this entry.