My little friend Luis

Little anectode:
As a fun little project to get my students more immersed in so-called American culture, my fellow foreign teachers and I decided to have our students choose American or foreign (fareng) names. My roommate googled the top 100 most popular names in the US. I guess it was not surprise when a good third of the names were "Alejandro, Pedro, Juan, Maria, Gabriela..." I should have taken these names off the list for confusion's sake, but out of laziness and perhaps interest I kept them on. A part of me was curious to see what names the children would gravitate towards. A few of my boys chose names like Angel and Alejandro. These children can't even pronounce American names, should I really go through the complicated explanation of explaning how to pronounce these names? I decided to just pronounce my Angel like angel, the English...to avoid such confusion. One of my boys has chosen the name Luis. When I asked him his name he said "lu-CY," after a minute or so of trying to figure out this boy's name I realized he had chosen Luis. When I told him how to pronounce Luis, he insisted "Lu-CY." At this point, I was doubled over in hysterics. The whole class started laughing, and although they had no idea why I was, it was a bonding moment with my class. How do I explain to them that the list of names I had them choose from was .... well ... not so American afterall? I did try to explain that Lucy was a girl's name, but the boy insisted on it. Apparently, he loves the name Lucy. Hey, I love Lucy too, so Lucy he will be! Print this post