Servers using aliases

[NCConch]

People in many Asian countries are given a western name. My wife is an international traveler and met a family in Shanghai that had a small retail shop. On one visit she got to meet their baby and they asked her what they should call him. She said "he looks like a Patrick". That is his name now.

 

[CesD]

on our last cruise the names on the envelopes were different servers and room attendants than the ones we had. we told GS and our servers just so they know but our envelopes were not updated. its good to double ck.

 

[Shelley Chiarats]

My brother is one of those. He has the same name as his father so as a young lad, he was called L.D. (the initials). He went by that all the way until he changed high schools in 11th grade. When he registered for that school they started calling him by his first name and he never told them differently. So his high school and college buds and now his wife all call him by his first name but he will always be L.D. to me.

 

[DisneyMom111]

This just happened to us on the Dream, our servers were Anthony and John. My son and I looked at each other and said, do you think that's really their names?! I guess it probably wasn't after reading all of these posts. Makes sense if you have a name that is hard for people to pronounce. Super nice people so I don't care what name they wanted me to call them, as long as they kept bringing me the good food!

 

[Starwind]

It's not just done on the ship. In many countries around the world, it's common for people to have an English name that they use when speaking English, even locally. Their English name may far pre-date their service on the ship.

In elementary/high school we took mandatory french as a second language; our teachers called us by our equivalent french names when they existed (think, Pierre, etc). We actually had some lessons about names and how english names convert to french, etc.

So I could imagine that in some cases at least, CMs from countries where they learned English as a second language in school might have had a similar experience where their names were either "translated" to english (where possible) or they adopted (or were given) english names to use in english class. It might then be natural to continue using that name (or choose another) as an adult when working in an english environment.

SW