Name is not just a name, but an Identity!

@ 10:02pm, Saturday August 9, 2014,

I am not sure if this is something that some of you might have thought of. I am thinking of how and why our culture and identity gradually fades away as if we never had any of our own culture or identity as a Cambodian. So many reasons popped up in my mind, but one thing stood out the most was our names. I believe that most of us have overlooked that. We never get to think about it that much. OR it is something that we do not really care about why we should think about. It is something that we mostly neglect to think through. So, let us think about it for a minute! Have you ever thought the names of your friends, family members, colleagues, relatives, boyfriends, girlfriends, nieces, nephew, grandparents, aunty, uncle...etc? Have you ever noticed about the changes or the differences concerning their names? Some might have noticed it, but fail to think through about the impacts that it might have on our society/ country. Have you ever heard of kids’ names these days? something like Shakira, Laura, Niken, Angella, Zana, Yuri, Ariya, Ben, David, Dona, Aliza, Jame? Maybe yes to most of us, and what is it like? Sounds cute? Nice? Lovely? I think yes to most of us again! They sound lovely, cute and nice, but think about it this way! Can we distinguish ourselves from others by the names these days? The answer is No, really difficult to find the difference! If we look at the names before like Bophadevi, Somavatey, Sokha, Davy, Ratha, Dara, Socheata, Sotheary, Socheat, Tepy...etc, we can clearly see the difference. We can easily guess by the name that this person is not from USA, Canada, China or Japan.

We are losing ourselves as Cambodians. We are losing our identity—the identity that we all are actually capable of treasuring it and protect it without causing any harm to anyone.

Name is not just used to call a person. It represents a person. It carries values of a person. It shows who you are and where you are from/ where you belong. It says so many things about you even before a person can ask you about yourself by just having your name as part of your identity.

I would like to suggest to parents out there who are having your babies or about to have babies. Please take a minute and think about it! Let us have a culture of loving our own identity as Cambodians. Let us love being Cambodians! Protect our identity by just having names that sound like Cambodians. An old saying , “ A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. We all can start it from now.

Anyone is interested in creating a Khmer Name Dictionary with me? This is one way to promote the idea. I think it will be better if we can have like a pocket dictionary so that everyone has it at home. When they think about the names for their kids, they can look up in the dictionary.