My name is Laura Hasegawa. I’m 77. I think that Nikkei people in my generation usually have either Japanese names only or Brazilian names with Japanese names as their middle names.
It seems that mother wanted to name me “Noêmia.” It’s a Brazilian name, but as it can be pronounced “Noemi” in Japanese, she probably thought it was a very convenient one.
My father went to the civil registry office immediately after I was born. When he came back, he told my mother that he had named me “Laura.” At first, she was surprised but then she thought that “Raura” was also a very good name; she would always call me by the Japanese pronunciation, “Raura,” rather than the Brazilian one.
When I was in middle school, I had to write about the origin of my name for a homework assignment. As a young girl who loved watching movies, I remember writing, “My father named me after the American mystery film Laura.” I let my imagination run wild. To this day, I don’t know if it was my imagination or if my father had actually watched Laura, a film from 1944.
There is another theory about my name. I vaguely remember my mother talking about a Brazilian nurse who was working at the hospital where I was born, and who suggested the name “Laura” to my father.
As I mentioned earlier, most Nikkei people of my generation only had Japanese names. Because of this, my mother was once asked by a neighbor, a wife of German descent, what “Laura” meant in Portuguese.
Also, many non-Nikkei kids back then, especially the girls, had really long names, which I thought was interesting and fun. For example, there was a girl named Maria (first name) Elisabete (middle name) Silveira (her mother’s surname) do Amaral (her father’s surname). The Nikkei people who had both Brazilian and Japanese names also had names that were longer than mine. My childhood friend’s name is Nelson Kazuhiro Kamimura. There were few who had short names like mine.
Now, let me tell you why I don’t have a Japanese name.
Rewinding time, my paternal grandparents arrived in Brazil on December 23, 1919. At the time, my father was 3 and his name was written as “長谷川 成海,” with his first name read as “Narumi.” His name on the official paper in Brail should have been “Narumi Hasegawa,” but it was registered as “Hasegawa Seikai” on his foreign resident identification document. In other words, the pronunciation of his name was recorded incorrectly, and to make matters worse, his last name was placed first, as in Japanese.
Another thing is that since the name “Hasegawa” ends with an a, it sometimes gets mistaken as a female name in Brazil.
My father’s name on his marriage certificate and my birth certificate was written as “Narumi Hasegawa” in the official way. Because of that, he had a declaration document that was issued by Consulate-General of Japan in São Paulo proving that the two names belonged to the same person. But he never told me why things turned out to be the way they did.
My mother, on the other hand, was born in Brazil, but her name is just “Mitsuno.” It’s a Japanese name, but because it ends with an o, it often got mistaken, and my mother was frequently thought to be male.
Both of my parents had trouble with their names throughout their lives. In the end, people in their neighborhood simply called my father “João” and my mother “Luiza.”
In fact, like my parents, quite a few people have nicknames. My paternal aunt’s name is Chiyo. As it sounds like “tio (uncle)” in Portuguese, she was always teased at school. When she started working, she gave herself the nickname “Maria Helena” and even made business cards with it.
In another case, a colleague of mine was called “Professora Teresa” among her students because her name “Toshiko” could sound like “drugs” in Portuguese, depending on how you would pronounce it.
I don’t think my father wanted to give me a Japanese name in the first place, as his experience had taught him Japanese names are hard to pronounce for Brazilian people and they could evoke conflicting feelings. I believe he did his best to choose a Brazilian name that was easy to read and pronounce.
I was called “Urara-san” a few times while I was staying in Japan. At first, I thought my name had been misspelled, but I felt very happy after discovering that “Urara” is actually a name in Japan.
In 1991, I published my first novel. I took it as an opportunity to create a pseudonym and came up with the following name in excitement: Laura (a Latin name chosen by my father) Honda (my mother’s surname) – Hasegawa (my father’s surname).
The important part is the hyphen that connects Honda and Hasegawa. I added it in the hopes that it would represent a single person.
So thanks to my writing job, my name – which I had already cherished before – became an even better one, and I’m very happy about it.
On October 25, 2024, I attended the graduation ceremony at FTSA (Faculdade Teológica Sul Americana). Everyone – my family, my priest teachers at church and my friends – was deeply moved, and they came to see me at the ceremony. They praised me for completing the studies despite the pandemic.
During the ceremony, when it was time to commend the best students, my name was called – “Laura Hasegawa.”
I wasn’t expecting it, and I was both overwhelmed and very delighted at the same time. And something happened after that. Let me tell you.
My friends made a list of nicknames for me and voted for the best one online.
The award I received was called “Láurea acadêmica” (academic honor) in Portuguese, and because the sound of the word “láurea” was similar to my name “Laura,” they came up with choices such as “Laura Laureada,” “Laureaura,” “Láurea Hasegawa,” “Laura Laurealina” and “Laureada.”
Following the two-day voting, my nickname was decided to be “Láurea Hasegawa.”
Which name would you have picked?
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Our Editorial Committee members in both Japanese and Portuguese selected this article as one of their favorite Nikkei Names 2 stories. Here are their comments.
Comment from Eijiro Ozaki
I can feel from the story that the Japanese immigrants who moved to Brazil in the early 1900s had to go through such frustrating experience, as some even couldn’t have their names registered correctly in their foreign resident identification documents, and that they probably underwent a series of unexpected hardships.
The author was given the name “Laura” because Japanese names were considered “hard to pronounce for Brazilian people” and were thought to “evoke conflicting feelings.” Laura-san then eventually got to publish her novel under the pseudonym “Laura Honda-Hasegawa” which combined her parents’ surnames. What a delight, and how proud she must have been!
I sincerely would like to applaud from the bottom of my heart the resilience of people who have endured many hard times in South America, which I can feel from the rather bubbly tone of the narration in this essay.
Comment from Liana Nakamura
Laura Hasegawa, after so many years contributing to Nikkei literature, takes us back to her childhood in the article “Why I don’t have a Japanese name.” She tells some stories of her father, who had a name considered feminine and the registry confusion that made him justify the existence of a “clone.” His mother also had a name considered masculine and this resulted in numerous racial and gender-based violence. Ancestry hurting them daily because of something as simple and complex as a name. Their solution for her daughter? A Latin name. Laura.
The creation of the artistic-literary surname “Honda-Hasegawa” shows the poignant desire to be “unique” and recover the mother’s surname from the patriarchal culture of Japanese immigrants. Laura not only recovers her history, but also points to a innovative future, now, with her new name as a theologian: Láurea Hasegawa. Divine!
© 2024 Laura Honda-Hasegawa
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