DacBiet

Dear sobriquet detractors,

I like my name. In Vietnamese, it means ‘bright mind’, which is a bit of a presumptuous name to call a kid, especially when you’re not sure if he will turn out to be all that smart. But since it’s a nice name with a nice ring to it (in Vietnamese at least), Viet people will insist on calling their kids ‘Minh Tri.’ And since it can seem that more than half of Viet people have the last name ‘Nguyen’, more than several will have my exact same first, middle, and last names. Actually, a quick search of Facebook for ‘Tri Nguyen’ will yield 3,300+ hits (before the vilified FB update).

It makes a fella feel real special. What also makes a guy feel special is when he gets a text message likely intended for someone else.

Me: uh…this is tri. wrong number?

Friend: hahahha, sorry tri!! i have another tri on my phone. i had made dinner plans and i had to cancel

Great. Even amongst friends, I’m not the only ‘Tri’ they know. But I do think that my unique Americanized pronunciation (like the letter ‘g’) sets me apart from the other Tri’s. And I do sign my posts with a lowercase ‘g’ to further my identity building. But sadly, for legal documents and other stuff like Facebook, you have to use your real name.

But I am special! (and not in a special needs way, not that there's anything wrong with that). I demand that I be the only person with my name! I’ll eliminate the rest of the poseurs one day, but in the meantime to set myself apart, I have donned a moniker which describes my uniqueness: DacBiet.

It means ‘special’ in Vietnamese. Most commonly, you might have seen it as one of the options for your pho, as in pho dac biet. Though dac biet is used like ordering the ‘special of the day’, it also has the meaning of ‘unique’.

And if you’ve managed to put up with my writing and rambling thus far, you will undoubtedly agree with my claim to being different than the rest, that I’m one of a kind. If not, you will.

Already people have taken notice of the identifying ‘middle name’ on Facebook. When new friends send requests of amity, they won’t be bewildered by the numerous impostors. They will simply have to search for ‘dacbiet’ (without a space), and they will find moi.

Notably, I had thought about using the title dai ca, meaning big boss or captain, but some guy had already snatched it up. In his about me description, 'Tri Dai Ca Nguyen' referred to himself as a ‘...pretty hard n*gga to be with' and states that 'If i'm goin forward, and you can't keep up, you gon be left behind.'

How brash! And it's a bit offputting that a non-my den* person would refer to himself by the N-word. Some people are just so full of themselves. Thankfully I’m not like that**.

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*African-American or black
**On second thought, I probably need gastric bypass surgery because I'm so full of myself.