What's in a name?

(April 15, 2000) When I was in Form 1 (middle school), my English teacher required every student in the class to get an English name. I had only one day to pick a name, and no one was there to help. Out of my very limited knowledge of common names at that time, and without getting any second opinion, I decided on "Sunny." It sounded like a happy name, and more importantly, it was easy to pronounce and remember. It didn't really matter anyway, because the name was used only in the English classes. "Sunny" is somewhat related to my Chinese name "Chung Yat San." "Yat" means "day" or "The Sun"; "San" means "new" and pronounced exactly the same as "sun".

A year later, I brought my first modem to enter the online world, I used "Sunny" as my actual nickname. (Note: The Internet didn't exist, I used a 2.4k modem to get on BBS.) I used this name in chat rooms, message boards... I even got my own "Sunny's BBS." I couldn't stop using this name since then.

   \ | /
\ /-----\ /
- |     | -
/ \-----/ \
   / | \ Sunny Chung

I went to USA for high school at grade 11 (Form 5), I had to use my English name exclusively. After some time I realized "Sunny" was a girl's name in America. I was surprised and not quite happy about this fact. But I didn't want to change my name, I liked it and my friends loved it too. I could also change the spelling to "Sonny" to make it a boy's name but I didn't.