[thaumasiotes]

There was a post on Language Log once scoffing at the stupidity of the Chinese for their feeling that Uyghurs should use normal Chinese names.

I asked a friend in Shanghai whether she thought Uyghur names should be allowed. She responded: "Huh? You don't get to choose what other people's names are. They tell you their names, and then you have to call them that.

And if you really want to think about weird names, there's a country called 'St. Vincent and the Grenadines'!"

(In other minority-names-in-China news, I have a Mongol friend whose name is Saruul. Her parents sinicized this as the three Mandarin syllables sha-ru-la, which look like a normal Chinese name. I don't actually know what she prefers to be called, but I suspect most people she knows call her Rula.)