Design does not exist in a vacuum. Design is how it works and it only works if it is dragged through real life. This is why my name looks the way it does.
I was born 陈升铭 on an island in Malaysia. 陈 being my family name while 升 was shared between my uncle’s boys and I. It is another family name that’s shared between the cousins instead of the wider clan. When I asked about the 铭 my father said that he named me after 貝聿銘, the architect I.M Pei whom he admired.
There had to be an addition to the name soon after my birth. I was to be called “Tan Seng Ming” on the birth certificate. A Romanized transliteration of my original name when spoken in Teocheow. This would be my official name for next 20 years.
Later I had to apply for college in America. The order of last names and first names made no sense to me. It meant that I had to be renamed ‘Seng Ming Tan’. I toyed with writing ‘Tan, Seng Ming’ but decided against it. When I thought it was settled, I started noticing that computers greeted me with ‘Seng’ or ‘Ming’. Anglo centric software is not built to show first names that had more than one word. This was a new low. I had to change my name again to get it to work on machines. I was ‘Seng-Ming Tan’ for years until I could not stand it. It looked like a misplaced barreled surname so it had to go.
For now I go by ‘SengMing Tan’. I keep the capitalization to preserve the sense that both “Seng Ming” are distinct words, pulled together because of the inadequacies of software. The name still has it’s problems. When I introduce myself as SengMing, people assume that they are separate parts of my name. Should they call me Seng? Would I prefer Ming? SengMing is fine I assure everyone, it comes as two words but I love and coddle them as one.