What's In A Name? By Jialin Peng

Culture, traditions, customs, social roles, and heritage are all apart of what make a person who they are. The location in which someone lives dictates how that person will think, act, and speak. The short story titled What’s in a Name?, tells the journey of how a young boys journey through adulthood is easily influenced and drastically changed by the traditions, customs, and social roles of the revolutionary times in China. In, What’s in a Name? by Jialin Peng, the influence of these items is extremely obvious and important; the main character is affected deeply by these aspects because they decide his name, his wife, his place on the social latter and countless other things. It is a scary thought having to live like this for years like

This is how the life of Chou Dexiao goes. From the moment he was born up until the Great Cultural Revolution, Chou’s name never raised alarm; this all changed once the revolution starts. During Mao Zedong’s reign Chou explains how, “[his] names-my family’s name, given name and adopted name-caused me no end of trouble,” (Peng 163). By Chou explaining this it proves how the feeling in the social roles and atmosphere changed. People who were once good friends were now enemies because of a name, a name which could get you killed unless changed. Also, he describes how, “[his] name reeked of the ruling class of feudalist times. Virtue and filial obedience- the Revolutionary Proletariat did not like them, Therefore, I had to change my name to a revolutionary one,” (Peng 164). Chou needed to change his name because it reminded people of the past. The country was moving forward so there was no want to be reminded of the

As many Chinese were changing their names they had a short list to chose from; the same name was used over and over again and no one wanted to be named the same thing as hundreds of thousands of others. This was Chou’s main issue, he was thinking about changing his name to ‘Mao’ when Zaofan, a classmate, laughs in his face, “You want to name yourself Mao too? Hah! Pee on the ground and look at your image to see if you’re worthy of the name Mao. What kind of person was your father?” (Peng 165). Zaofan implies that Chou is not worthy of the name ‘Mao’ because his father was a rightist. After thinking it over Chou thinks to himself, “I knew what he was getting at. Before their deaths, my father had been a rightist and my grandfather a landlord. I was not worthy of so great and honorable a family name as Mao; absolutely not,” (Peng 165). Chou convinces himself that he is not worthy of a name because of his heritage. In order to have a well-known respected name, the heritage of the family needs to be correct. Unfortunately, Chou was