At the beginning of the IELTS Speaking test the examiner will ask for your name. Just state your real full name or say something like “My name is Chow Xin Xin, but you can call me Stephen.” However, if the examiner asks you a question about your name, you must be ready to respond. In this post, I’m going to give you some useful expressions for talking about your name.
Meaning and origin
If the examiner asks whether your name has a special meaning, you can use an expression like in the examples below:
- It’s Korean for “beautiful sunshine”.
- As far as I know, it comes from the Latin word for “sun”.
- It doesn’t have any special meaning.
English names
If you use an English name and the examiner asks something like “How can I address you?”, you can say something like:
- You can call me Stephen.
- My English name is Stephen.
- People call me Mike.
Shortened names
If you want to say that your name is the short version of a longer name, you can say something like:
- My name is short for ‘Frederick’.
First names, surnames, given names
In Western countries, people usually have two or more names — a first name or forename, which is given by the child’s parents at birth, and a family name, which is called a surname or last name (American English). A person can also have one or more middle names given at birth.
John (first name) Michael (middle name) Smith (surname)
In some parts of the world, especially in East Asia, a person’s family name traditionally comes first. In this context, the name that is given by the child’s parents at birth is called a given name:
Zhang (family name) Wei (given name)
it is useful.
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