周正隆

My name in Chinese is 周正隆, pronounced [ˌt͡sou̯ t͡sənˈloŋ]. The first half of my given name, 正 [t͡səŋ], means ‘upright, correct’. The second half of my given name, 隆 [loŋ], either means ‘prosperity’ or is onomatopoeic of thunder. Family names are opaque in Chinese, but if they weren't, one interpretation of my name could have been ‘meticulously honest boom’.

Because I am from the south of China and a native speaker of a dialect with no /t͡ʂ/, I prefer my name pronounced with [t͡s] s instead of [t͡ʂ] s. In fact, I prefer my last name to be always pronounced as [t͡sou̯], even in English.

Z.L. Zhou

When I moved to the U.S., one of the first things I had to do was rename myself at the behest of my preschool teacher. This was, perhaps, a dangerous thing to ask of a five-year-old. Prudently but also uninspiredly, I decided to abbreviate ‘Zhenglong’, the pinyin rendering of 正隆, as ‘Z.L.’ and leave it at that. The periods would, of course, be mandatory, to remind you that it was an abbreviation. I felt very smart, knowing that abbreviations in English had periods.

I feel less strongly about abbreviations now, but it's also far too late to second-guess my five-year-old self.

So, my first name in English is Z.L., pronounced [ziˈɛl], with iambic stress and nonoptional punctuation. However, when my name is said in full, it undergoes stress shift to become [ˌzi.ɛl ˈt͡sou̯]. A happy OCP effect, since it results in my English name having the same stress pattern as my Chinese name!