My name is Jimmy Dean Rion. That’s what’s on my birth certificate. It’s official. Written in stone. Of course, in daily life, I made the common American choice to use a short form. Jim. Jim Rion. Nice to meet you. (By the way, if you google “Jim Rion,” there are really only two that come up: Me and my cousin, who is a pastor at a Texas mega-church.)
Jimmy Dean Rion does not strike me as a particularly difficult-to-read name for an American, at first glance. Sure, “Jimmy” as a legal name is a bit unusual. And the spelling of my last name isn’t super common. But it’s all of five syllables. No apostrophes. No extended consonant clusters. Nothing that, in my opinion, should give the average native English speaker pronunciation trouble.
Oddly, even with such an apparently simple name, has been shockingly difficult for so, SO many people all my life that I just don’t even know what to think about it.
The most common problem is pronouncing my last name, which, OK. I could see people assuming (wrongly) it might sound like the French, /rii-ON/. But I’ve had people read it /rein/ or even /roon/.
It’s /RAI-on/. Like “lion” but with an “r.” Like the common Irish name Ryan.
Oddly, my first name has also been an odd source of confusion. My high school principal refused, point blank, to believe my real name was “Jimmy” and not only called me “James,” he wrote it on official certificates. Which is incredibly frustrating because there are points in life when official high school documents are actually important.
Luckily, I left all that behind when I went to college.
But then I came to Japan. HOO BOY has my name been a pain in the ass since then.
First, to give some background to those who don’t know: Japanese name order is Family name – Given name. Which is the reverse of English speaking countries overall. Also, Japanese people do not traditionally have middle names, so official documentation doesn’t have space for them.
When I came to Japan, I did so under the wing of a large English-language education company. My official documentation was all done under their auspices, and they didn’t ask my input. Which, fair enough, I knew nothing about how Japanese bureaucracy worked nor did I read or write the language. But they messed up when they did it.
Somehow, in the official government systems that dictate my insurance, residence cards, etc., my name became Family name: Jimmy Dean, Given name: Rion.
Also, they decided the katakana spelling of ライオン /raion/ which is, honestly, what I would have done but for Japanese people sounds like a fake name because it’s how they write the name of the animal, lion. My wife wishes it was ライアン /raian/ which is usually how Ryan is transliterated. A fair point.
Anyway, I was able to somewhat remedy this order issue by registering the correct order as an alias (something government offices make oddly easy here) so for later documents, like my driver’s license, I can use the correct order.
Because it IS the correct order in Japan. Rion Jimmy Dean is OBVIOUSLY the correct order when living and working in Japan. I know there are those who think that names are some kind of monolith that should never be adapted to fit any context, but to those I say: My wife took my name when we married. Do you think her name should be Jimmy Dean T— ? OF COURSE NOT. We are the Rion family. Family name is family name, regardless of whether it comes first or second.
And so, I use ライオン ジミー /raion jimii/ in all my Japanese correspondence.
Which brings us to what instigated this little rant. My translation of Strange Pictures has made the shortlist for the UK Crime Writers Association Dagger awards for Crime Fiction in Translation. This has become a big deal, to the point that the Asahi Shimbun newspaper printed an article about it… And in that article, called me ジム・リオン /jimu riion/.
On the one hand, it’s how someone might well assume it is written in Japanese just by looking at my name. But on the other hand, a professional journalist for a major newspaper didn’t even TRY to check. No emails, no reading my company website (which lists my name in Japanese). They just winged it. Which is lazy journalism. (NOTE: the article has been corrected and the reporter apologized, so all is OK now.)
Oh, and by the way, yes. Strange Pictures is shortlisted for a Dagger!
The results will be announced July 2. It’s a very tight list, so who knows what the chances are, but it’s quite exciting to see my work being so well-regarded.
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I don’t know how it happened (probably my fault) but my younger son’s name on the family register is firstnamemiddlename familyname. I honestly don’t know how it happened, but that’s the way his name appears on his Japanese passport. He was born in Canada, so it’s entirely possible I messed up when registering his birth with the consulate in Vancouver? I cannot remember.
If he does decide to build a life in Japan (still in HS) we’ll have to help him figure it out. Although I believe changing names is a pain in the ass.
Meanwhile, my wife goes by Thompson in Japan — that’s the name on the family register — but retains her Japanese family name in Canada. We have different last names. Why did we do that, I wonder? We were married in Canada, at which point she applied for permanent residence. We never got around to changing her name, I suppose. But now her permanent residence card uses her Japanese family name, and PR in Canada is just a massive tangle, so we’ve avoided changing it.
However, this has caused further problems (of course). Her current employer pays her partly in stock options. These stocks are initially purchased and managed over the border, in the U.S. She could patriate them to Canada, but the fund manager needs two pieces of ID to do that… a PR card and a passport. Both of which have different names.
The solution is getting Canadian citizenship, which she technically (legally?) cannot do.
Ooooh boy. That’s pretty wild.
Come to think of it, my wife’s Japanese passport ended up with Raion for the official romaji, which has caused several problems in international stuff.
Names, man. They’re just not that simple.