Lissette Lorenz

Twice a week during lunchtime I sit with some students who are keen on improving their English. It is a fairly formal setup called Conversation Circle. During a recent CC episode, I introduced myself to a new face who had joined us that day. When I told her my name was Lissette, she replied, “Why would your parents name you Reset?”

My name is tricky/silly to some Japanese for a couple of reasons. The first is that when written in Japanese, my name comes out to

リセット, which is also a Japanese loan word borrowed from English. Observe the following screen shot of a webpage I encountered: 

Can you find my name? It’s next to 登録 button, which means “register.” Then there is me, the “reset” button.

I first discovered that my name meant “reset” in Japanese when I went bowling in Osaka and wanted to clear some pins on the lane after the machine that does it for you in my lane froze. Then there I was, the リセットbotton, ready to assist me.

Another reason why my name is funny or difficult for some Japanese people is because there is no “L” sound in Japanese. The closest thing the language has is a Spanish-sounding “R,” in which the tip of the tongue briefly taps the roof of the mouth. It is quite close to the “L” sound, actually, in which the tongue is flicked at the roof of the mouth. (The English “R” on the other hand, has no tongue action at all; just a rounding of the lips and an emphatic rumble of air.) Many Japanese have trouble distinguishing the “R” sound from the “L” sound in spoken and written English because when they learned English in school, it was most likely by writing out English words phonetically in Japanese Katakana, in which both the R and the L both get translated to the “Ra/Ri/Ru/Re/Ro” sounds.

So back to the conversation I had with one of my students. I spelled my name on a sheet of paper and explained that my name starts with an L and is spelled fairly differently from “reset”, though the pronunciation is very close.* I also explained that it is French for “Little Elizabeth,” and comparable to “Elizabeth-chan” in Japanese or the nick name “Lizzy” in English.

This conversation about names prompted another student to try to come up with Kanji that phonetically match as closely as possible to my full name. It’s not really possible to make りせっと、so instead we used my nick name, Lissi. That had to be moderated further, however, because besides the L, there is no “si” sound, like in Spanish–the closest sound is “shi.” So together the Japanese students brainstormed a congenial pair of Kanji for Rishi, which was very doable. The result was 梨志, which means “strong-hearted pear.”**

My last name is was christened 呂恋樹, which comes out to Rorenju. I think my students misheard the “z” sound, and so I have tweeked the last character to reflect that sound. So now my last name is 呂恋杜, Rorenzu, the closet to Lorenz that Japanese can afford  me. It means “the grove of spine(-tingling) romance.” So now I’m a strong-hearted pear growing in a spine-tingling grove of romance. That just about sums me up.

*Reset sounds so similar to Lissette, in fact, that I might start introducing myself as “Lissette, like reset but with an L” to native English speakers that I meet in order to help them get my name right. For some reason when I introduce myself to new (Englsih-speaking) people many of them only hear the “Lis-” part of my name and proceed to call me Lisa.

** Strong-hearted is one way to interpret the Kanji 志. Its components are “Samurai” on top and “heart” on the bottom. The character can also mean will, aspire, hope, and strangely, shilling. So other interpretations of my name can be “Willful Pear,” “Hopeful Pear,” “Aspiring Pear,” “Pear with the Samurai heart” or “A Shilling for a Pear.” Which one is your favorite?