Last name.

Ever since I live in this continent, I always find people's last name to be interesting. I am sure people find my last lame (surname, or family name) amusing too because how could "Ng", a word that doesn't have vowel, but only consonant be a valid last name? It is rare for people here to have the confidence to pronounce 'Ng' correctly. Whenever they see my name, they would pause slightly, and elevate their heads, ask me politely, 'How do I pronounce your last name?'

'Forget about it, just call me xxxxx.'

That's always my way of replying.

Back to the topic. After a few years living here I realized virtually any words can be last names. I have seen some really cool one, like ''Bachelor", "Singleton", "Handsome", etc. You get the picture. Can you imagine being address as 'Mr. /Ms. Handsome' all the times? I always regard these people as the lucky one because, hey, how often do we get to have cool last names like that?

Needless to say, there are also reverse cases. I always regard those as 'unfortunate' one.

In the hospital, whenever we call back some critical results, we'll have to obtain politely the RN (registered nurse)'s first initial and last name. There was once I heard, 'I am Ms.Whore', I was like, 'Can you repeat that?', then she said, "My last name is HORE, H-O-R-E.'

Oh, I see.

Can you imagine how unfortunate that is?

Lately I have encountered a really sick patient in the hospital having "Grave" as last name. Not to correlate the physical condition with the name, but somehow I can't help but to feel bad for the patient.

To me, the worst last name to have would be ...





"Coffin"






Now that is the ultimate 'unfortunate'.

When I was in school I happened to discuss this phenomenon with a professor, and I brought up this ultimate 'unfortunate' last name. She agreed with me. She told me, believe or not many of the "Coffin" family members made their way to the doctoral level. Can you imagine if you're a MD, or PhD and your last name has to be heighten and you're addressed as Dr. Coffin all the time?

Whatever it is, we shall all cherish our last names.