Our Given Names (Me, My Sister, and My Cousins on My Mother’s Side)

Screenprint, transferred ink and vinyl on paper
18 in x 24 in
2021

This work pairs our official, largely Anglicized names with the Vietnamese names given to us by our parents and still used within our family. Like a family tree, the names are organized according to the birth order of our parents, whom we respectfully address by their birth number. They are also arranged according to the places where we were born: Bạc Liêu, Vietnam, a refugee camp in Pulau Bidong, Malaysia, and later Canada and the United States.

Within my generation, some cousins were born in Vietnam during the war and later fled the country by boat with relatives, carrying only their Vietnamese names and identities, like my eldest cousin, Lâm (later Lisa). My sister, Tú (later Amy), and my cousin, Dũng (later Danny), were born in a UNHCR-run refugee camp in Malaysia, where they survived difficult and precarious premature births. After our family was resettled in Toronto as refugees, I was born as Tuyến (later Jennifer).

I often think about my cousins, my sister, and myself—our experiences of feeling uncertain or assured, embarrassed or proud; of speaking our mother tongue, forgetting parts of it, and learning it again. These names carry histories of migration, displacement, adaptation that connect our family across generations and across places.

My uncle, Chú Dương (later Steve Nguyen), assisted with research and the Vietnamese spellings.