The three best-known western names in China: Jesus Christ, Richard Nixon, and Elvis Presley.

English is taught throughout China’s secondary schools and the English language section is a required component of the Gaokao, China’s college entrance examination. Many Chinese teenagers thus acquire English names, which they may keep and use as nicknames even in Chinese-language contexts. Chinese may adopt English names for a variety of reasons, including foreigners’ difficulty with Chinese tones and Chinese culture’s regard of foreign names as upper-class or egalitarian. The freedom associated with choosing a Chinese given name sometimes leads to choosing English names which seem bizarre to native English speakers.