The Difference Between Phoung and Phung

It is said that much is held in a name. Step into the Refugee Community Center, and you’ll be surrounded by folks whose names are frequently mispronounced or misspelled. To be sure, the names take on this hard-to-pronounce trait specifically because we are within these walls; within this city; within this context. Mambala and Zlata and Huy and Tuaka and Farishta and Florent are here. No matter that in Gambia and Bosnia and Vietnam and Nigeria and Iran and Sierra Leon their names may ring like John and Jenny and Bob and Bill and Becky and David. In this country, they signify “otherness.” To those with whom these children interact, this impression may carry a positive or negative charge. Neutrality does not emerge here, as they are undoubtedly always the “other.”

I sat with a young child yesterday, and today it seemed as though we had known each other forever. Third graders have a way doing that easily; no consideration of what has come before. It seems that if one is willing to help, one gains instant celebrity status among a classroom of elementary students. So as I entered today, she waved her arms with wild excitement from her seat “Oooo! Miss Jill! Can you help me with my homework?” Pleased that someone remembered me, I smiled and sat down next to Phoung. Or is it Phung.

She asked me quickly, in a high-pitched, third grade intonation, “do you remember my name?” I was pleased I had gone over the names in my head last night, and said (almost proudly), “yes, sweetheart. It’s Phoung.” She giggled and said, “No it’s not! It’s Phung!” Knowing that Vietnamese is a tonal language, but not ever really knowing what that meant, I could hear the slightest difference in the tone and sound of the two names. “O.K., Phung,” I started, “thank you for correcting –” “Noooooooo! It’s Phoung!” I stared at her, trying to discern whether she was teaching me about her culture or simply playing a trick on me. I was suddenly aware of my own brief otherness as I looked around the table and three other Vietnamese children started laughing and speaking to each other in Vietnamese. “Which name to you prefer?” I asked her. “Well, the thing is, Phoung is Vietnamese, Phung is Chinese.” My mind was now racing with Chinese occupation and Vietnam War information, as I tried to fit this conversation into a context that I understood. “You see,” she continued quickly, “ in Vietnamese it means far, far off place; in Chinese it means distant place.” Now it was my turn to giggle, as the stress in her explanation did not fall on “far, far off place” or “distant place” as it would have in this culture. Instead, she stressed the words “Vietnamese” and “Chinese” (which we would do also), but omitted the stress on the differentiating characteristics. So why did I think that Vietnamese was a tonal language and English is not? “Really,” I said, in genuine amazement. “Which do you prefer?” “Well,” she continued, “my real name Phoung, my nickname Phung. My parent call me Phung, my teacher call me Phoung. Around here, they call me Phung.” “O.K., hun. So Phung it is,” I declare, trying to do things as they do “around here.”

“No,” she said as she pulled out her worksheet. “Phoung is fine.”