What's in a name? at 4:55 AM

Last week I assigned all my classes homework,
1. Pick an English name
2. Make a name tag
From what I can tell most kids did alright. There are the kids whose English isn't so good and they just didn't do it, but once they saw the rest of the class pull out name tags they usually got to business pretty quickly, but even though most kids did the homework, I still had to go check all the names, just in case someone picked something they shouldn't. Like the kid who named himself Lucifer in one of my classes. I made him change that one.  I will say that I was pretty excited when I met a kid who had named himself Tank. I thought that was cool enough i let him keep it. I did let one kid keep the name Obama too. So here are some of the stats for the week.

• I think I had 3 guys who had named themselves Chloe. I made them change their names.
• I had one guy named Misty. (When I told him to change his name, he asked if he could be Diamond, I sighed and tried not to slap my fore head, ... and then said yes)
  
• I had I think 10-15 guys overall who picked girls names.(I actually made all the guys with Girls names change their names)
• I think I've only had one or two girls in my classes who had boys names, but I've still met a few girls who chose boys names, (Peter and several Allens at least)

Now here is the fun part. I think I helped at least 200 kids pick new names, maybe even up into the 500's. Now I really tried to stick to normal names, but once I had worked through the names of my last room mates, pretty much all my friends, my ex-girlfriends and their family, My family, kids I knew in grade school, all my old pets, and all the normal names I could think of, a thought hit me. There's probably a good chance these kids might not leave China, and if their English gets that good that they do go to America one day, they'll know to change it. So I loosened up and picked a few more interesting names. Here's a list of some of the names I gave out.

Apollo,
Creed,
Rocky, (go Rocky)
Locke, (As in John)
Guile, (Street fighter)
Laser, (I even made the sound and motion of a laser so he knew what it was, He loves it)
Destiny,
Victor,
Hugo,
Luke,
Umaro, (FF3)
Jade,
Dutchess,
Winny, (as in "The Pooh")
Clam,
Plato,
Trigger, (That's one of my favorites)
Sissy, (I figure Girls can be Sissy)
Fire,
Ice,
Dakota,
Lance, (If Lance was only a pretty boy name and not a weapon, I probably wouldn't have used it)
and Saber.

Here are a few names my friend Jason gave out,
Han,
Chewy,
Leia, (I actually gave out one of those too)
Vader,
and Luke

And for those of you who may think that I shouldn't have given a kid the name Trigger, I quote Juliet from Shakespeare.

"What's in a name? that which we call a rose
      By any other name would smell as sweet;
      So Romeo would, were he not Romeo call'd,
      Retain that dear perfection which he owes
      Without that title. Romeo, doff thy name,
      And for that name which is no part of thee
      Take all myself."

(I'm pretty sure she wanted Romeo to change his name to Trigger too. That name is way cooler than Romeo)
(Also, I apologize for calling boys named Lance "Pretty")