Change ur name

Not a chance! I was named after a friend of my dad's from his university days. It's not a particularly unusual name in Maori or Pasifika languages; though it is pretty exclusively a name for dudes. Pair it with my surname and you get this suitably awkward mix of West European mongrel and Oceaniac consonant-syllable-consonant-syllable antics.

The one conceivable change would be dropping my dad's surname and adopting my mum's (basically "Pinewell" in Japanese.) if I decided to settle here permanently. At which point I could choose official kanji for my first name as well. I keep reminding myself I need to check the rules for this, but if im allowed to say "it's written like 'bird' but pronounced like Manu", I am totally doing that.

One weird thing I just realised about my name is that, on the whole, Japanese folks pronounce it better than Westerners, who often get the stresses wrong :v

When you first mentioned your name i wondered if you were maori/pacifica because of it, actually :v

Dalm: That is super butts. Certainly doesn't excuse the lecturers from being super rude >:l