Where are you from? 

I'm from Taiwan. I was born in Taichung city, which is in the center of the island. But I grew up in mainland China, so I'm moving from city to city. And I grew up going to international schools and kindergarten.

Where do you live now? 

For school, I'm now in New York and I live in a Chinatown in Manhattan. And I don't really have a home right now because I move so much. And I don't really have a place I call home at the moment. 

What is your name? 

My Chinese name is Zhang Ming. But Zhang is like my family name, which is very common, like one of the most common Chinese surnames. And Ming means empathy, because I'm Christian and my whole family is Christian. And the word actually comes from the Bible. It means sympathy. It's just like a nice word. And it's not one of those more cliche Bible names, like Gloria, Grace, that kind of stuff. But because I went to international schools growing up, I also have an English name that I associate with just as deeply as I associate with my Chinese name. 

What is your English name? 

My English name is Emily (sound), but it's spelled very differently. It's A-M-E-I-L-Y. So when I was very young in kindergarten, before I turned six, my kindergarten teacher gave me an English name, Amy. And I realized a lot of my classmates in kindergarten, they're also called Amy. And I really hate that I'm not special. I'm like Amy 1, Amy 2, Amy 3. I felt really mediocre, even though I was just five years old. So I asked my mom, I said, I don't like this name. I want to change it. And then my mom was like, yeah, sure. Then what do you want to change it to? And at the time, she was watching a French movie from 2001. The film was called A-M-E-L-I-E, in french. It's a love story. It's a pretty iconic romance French movie. And my mom was watching that. I was five. I couldn't understand what the movie was about. And I saw the title of the movie. And five-year-old me was like, I like how that name looks. I like how the alphabets look together. But I don't want to copy. I was only five, but I was already thinking a lot. I don't want to copy the name as it is. So I changed it a little bit. And that's how I got the spelling that I have today. But I pronounce it as Emily, just like the E-M-I-L-Y, just to make it easier for people to pronounce it. 

Have your name changed ever since you moved into a new space or different spaces? 

I think the only people who call me by my Chinese legal name are my family. And I feel more comfortable because, I guess it's because I grew up surrounded by friends who speak English. And we feel more comfortable conversing in English. So I just feel more comfortable when people address me as Ameily. I'm not saying I feel uncomfortable when people address me by my Chinese name. Just, I guess in the friend setting or in the social setting, I prefer the name that I made for myself. And I didn't realize that if my Chinese speaking friends suddenly address me by my Chinese name, I feel like we're going to talk about something very serious. I feel like, oh my god, why are you calling me by my Chinese name? It's almost like in a dating situation, people call each other babe. But then when you address each other by their full name, you're like, oh shit, shit is about to go down. 

Do you feel resonated by the name Amily on a personal level?

When I first came to the US in 2016, and I introduced myself as Ameily. And there was a, I remember distinctly, there was this like, white old teacher that said, why don't you just use your real name? Yeah, and I was like, I don't know, he made me feel really bad about my name, Emily. I don't know, I guess it's like a context thing. I guess here, people pay more attention to your cultural roots. Yeah. I guess, back in, what, like in the early 2000s, back in Asia, it's, I guess it was like a more trendy thing if you have an English name. And it kind of encourages kids to have one too. I was brought up in that environment, so that's what came as natural to me. Now that I see it, I can see it from that cultural perspective. But it's just, Ameily is already so integrated in my identity. I don't feel there's a problem with not addressing myself as me. 

How do you like to name yourself in the digital world? 

Oh, I call myself Ameily with an A. I actually came from a joke because I was introducing my name. And he asked me similar questions like, why this Ameily? And I was telling the whole French movie story. And he started calling me Emily but with an A. And I was like, you know what? I like that. I'm gonna make it my Instagram handle. And then it ended up becoming my website name, my Instagram handle. And the watermark I put on my artwork. It just became like my online identity.

Did you run into any problems when deciding on this specific name handle? 

I did feel like if you tell someone, hey, my Instagram handle is Ameily with an A. It's not as easy as, I don't know, like people can't get the spelling correctly. So just by telling them, you have to type it out or show it to them. So I feel like in the marketing sense, if you're not very famous or very well established, it can be a little confusing for people when you're advertising yourself.

Do you resonate with your digital handle? 

I think from my experiences, I don't take my online name that seriously. 

If you would still change your English name to not even change, would you still choose Amily?

I love, I love, I love the name Amily. I have a lot of stories with both my Chinese and English name. I feel like it adds a lot of color to my identity. And yeah, I will definitely still have Amily as my name. There's nothing I regret about it. So if I get reincarnated again, I will choose this name again.