What's in a name?

In Japan names are usually fairly simple; people have one first name and one family name and that's it. Of course, there are degrees of complications in this as well with names that is written with such obscure characters that most Japanese can't read them and difficulties of that degree.

However, my problem is that I have too many names... I have a Swedish first name and family name, and add to that also a Japanese first name and family name and then an extra middle name thrown in there just for good measure. That people can have quite a few names is nothing particularly unusual at least in Sweden, so things go fairly smooth there. But adding to the confusion is that I quickly learned that calling and ordering a pizza in Sweden is much smoother if I use my Swedish name but on the other hand using my Japanese name in Japan when calling for a pizza also usually creates less confusion. Since I work in Japan, I basically use my Japanese family name but this also creates some confusion when I meet people from head office who would have an easier time relating to my Swedish family name.

But the above is just minor practical things that are easily set straight, the real difficulties I run into is that when filling in official forms where "full name" is required, the space is not adapted to the 30+ letters that I need to actually write my full name. This can really create some serious confusion and creative solutions among Japanese officials. Then some forms require the name to be in the Japanese "Katakana" alphabet and not in roman letters, while some forms require the name to be written as "in the passport" which for me of course means roman letters...

Basically everytime I fill in some official forms related to credit cards, banks etc. where consistency is required I run into problems and get forms returned to me with instructions to write my name in a certain way since some clerk had made some creative solution in his/hers files that I am not completely aware of... Usually forms are sent back and forth a few times until someone gets creative and things can get solved...

In work, just for fun to the people I am on friendly basis with, I use my Japanese first name "Takao" when signing e-mails and likewise sometimes people uses that name to me as a joke. One particular time I remember how someone had written "Takao will take care of that" meaning, of course, as we both understood, that I would do it, but a person who wasn't aware of my Japanese name was also cc:ed and replied back to everyone "that's fine but who the hell is Takao?!".

Sometimes I envy the Malaysian exchange student I briefly studied with in Japan who only had one name... Very little room for confusion there!

Hey! Click the picture and read it, it's pretty funny, you have my word!