Students

When students sign up for classes, they are asked if they want to use an English name. Most do. However, they are not given any advice or feedback about what are appropriate names. As a result, some have unusual names.

Some of the names:
Seven
Pixie
Lala
Butterfly -She got tired of having people refer to her as "fly" since she doesn't like that pesky insect, so she decided to change her name to Teresa. When I pointed out to her that "fly" can mean really cool, she said she might go back to Butterfly.
Shany
Mo
Starry
Dragon
Snake
Apple -contrary to what you might think, this is an elegant middle-aged woman.
There are several named "Cherry".

Yoko -when I saw her name I said, "Oh, you chose the name from Yoko Ono". She had no idea who that was.

Sijean -he "invented" this name and later learned that there are only 3 people with this name in the US; he was proud of this fact. (His father is a music producer, who helps Chinese artists make records.)

Rachel is a journalist for a Chinese car magazine. She just returned from Berlin where VW paid all expenses and let her try out a new Audi model.

James just returned from scaling Mt McKinley in Alaska. He's a tour guide for a living. I brought a camera to class one day to demonstrate a lesson; he spontaneously picked up the camera and took a picture of his mouth. That's his photo you see here. Beautiful teeth, no?

Maria is a very interesting woman. She has been both a university professor and a lawyer. Next month, she is going to Philadelphia to play in a bridge tournament.

Simon - this is a woman. I explained to her that this was a man's name, and that the female version is Simone. As usual with the students, she didn't care and has kept her name as Simon.

Winnie - his name in Chinese means "bear", and he knew that Winnie the Pooh was a bear.

Princess - never was there a more appropriately named student. She talks about how people with money are better people. Actually, she's a pretty nice person.

Lancelot - why not? No Guinevere's, though.
Wanzy -remember this is her chosen ENGLISH name.
Elpha -actually a German name, but she probably thought it would be ok to use since it's a western name.
Sven - a Swedish name, of course. See above.

We also have an employee named Bingo.

And my favorite: we have a supervisor whose family name is Sun. For her "English" name, she chose Rainer. So her name is Rainer Sun.

BTW Some laugh when I tell my name. To them, it sounds like "kiss" b/c of the way they pronounce it.