English Names

Welcome to my Grade 7 EFL class.
The first lesson of the first week involved giving all of the students English names.

While many of the students had or selected very common English names (as were the examples given on the board), many students had more....creative names.
Pizza was the name selected by a quiet little girl who sat along the right side of the class, while Canning, was a name given by a boy in the same class. I'm not sure how a progressive verb becomes a name, but it did.

Sintar was given by a girl.

Dick was the name a boy gave me, but I just couldn't let it happen.

A girl wanted to be called Bob.

Though Bear was not a horrible name (it's kind of cute for a nickname), I just couldn't allow this young boy to grow into a young man who went around introducing himself as Bear.

While these names are strange, the two that I found most dumbfounding were Hymen and Horny. One question: How did this happen?

Needlees to say that while these less common English names were forfeited, I did allow the girls to keep their stripper names like Candy, Angel and Cherry. Having a name that ends with a 'y' is very common for Chinese girls, so needless to say, I teach 12 Kellys, 12 Kathys, 12 Sherrys, 12 Lilys and 12 Sandys...but only 1 Yu-Ki (apparently she's a famous Chinese singer) and one KiKi (just because).

In the last class that I taught I was absoloutely amazed at the thought, passion and skill of two students. After naming half of the boys I reached one who stood up and in a loud voice claimed, "I think that man should change his name," pointing blinding to the back left of the classroom. "He chose Harry. I am Harry. I have been using that name for 8 years." I wouldn't have even thought about going against this boy, as his passion and the fact that he was brave enough to string several sentences together in his first English class (eventhough he is very skilled) was admirable. Luckily the first Harry was so lost by all of the English he didn't care and is now better known as Ben.

In this same class, directly behind the real Harry, a loud female voice boomed out to me. "My lucky number is 7. So I think that my name should be Seven." Once again, the thought, the determination and the sentences impressed and now I have a real Harry and a Seven who sit quietly one behind the other, listening to everything I say, sadly they seem to be the only ones who understand it all.