Len La Barth found this and left it on my desk for me to see. Besides our coffee addiction, we’re both sushi fanatics (but not the only ones in this office!).

The restaurant Hana Japan is located in San Francisco, so I will have to check it out when I go to visit my relatives. I like it when I see my name on a Japanese restaurant. It makes me want to go in and check out their sushi.

Another thing about my name; it’s Japanese. You see, I’m a fourth generation Japanese-American. My name has its inspiration from the land named Hanilee in the nursery rhyme “Puff the Magic Dragon.” It was taken and converted into the Japanese name Hana by my family. Since then, I’ve found that Hana is known in other languages; Hawaiian, Korean, Spanish, Slavic and Arabic. It’s pretty fun to look up your own name and its meanings. A lot of people don’t realize my name is not a nickname for Hannah. I get called ‘Hannah’ or letters with my name printed as ‘Hanna’ or ‘Hannah’ more than I care to count. I’m forever correcting people on pronunciation and spelling. On bad days, I get upset if my name is mangled. Other days I just smile and correct.

Correcting people on my name has presented an interesting situation. Most people assume that since I’m Deaf — profoundly deaf and relies on American Sign Language — that I must not be able to speak or know how my name is pronounced.

19 years of enduring speech therapy has given me some ability to speak and lip reading skills. One of the first things I was taught, was how to say my name and recognize it. Ha-na. Like Banana. Thank goodness, my name is only two simple syllables. Other deaf classmates whose names were more than three syllables had a harder time.

Nowadays, when I correct a hearing person on how my name is pronounced after they mangle it by saying “Hannah,” sometimes they look stunned or suspicious at me. Then I have to explain how I know.

“No, I can’t hear you say it. No, I’m not faking being deaf. I know how my name looks on the lips. Ha-na and HAN-nah have distinct lip shapes.”

Why bother correcting people? I don’t want to be known as a deaf person whose name nobody really knows how to spell or say right. Is it Hannah? Hanna? Hans? Trevor? Stanley? Okay, that’s going off the track here.

Anyway, I hear sushi calling my name!

This entry was posted on Friday, October 19th, 2007 at 4:50 pm and is filed under Assortments. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.