22 - what's in a name

For MicroBlogVember

I don't know how to say my middle name.

My father emigrated in the 1960s; by the 1990s, he was pretty much fully assimilated and did not bother trying to imprint any of his own childhood culture upon his family. He'd left most of it behind on purpose to pursue a lifetime of Christianity. My (white) mother said she wanted me and my brother to have "Chinese names" in some form, and my (Peranakan) grandmother came up with them. So, there it is, taunting me any time I get carded at the liquor store or go to the DMV.

I know it's supposed to be written 德強, but I only know that because several years ago I spent a not insignificant amount of time researching it, to the point of digging my father's genealogy out of an old drawer and painstakingly matching the characters and supposed pronunciation of the newest entry. The way it's written on my passport and driver's license is romanized, and according to my limited understanding, not especially well; if I were to read it as written, it would not sound at all similar to a native Cantonese speaker.

In the parlance of the schoolyard, this (among other things) made me a "banana": yellow on the outside, white on the inside (this user can say it). Though, I'm sure if you were to ask others, I'm much too white-passing for even that much.