Opinion | I Got My Name From Connie Chung. So Did They.



Portrait of Connie Chung

Rising up, I assumed
being named after Connie Chung
made me distinctive.

… then I came upon about the remainder of us.

Connie Hsu b. 1981
Connie Hsu, b. 1981

Connie Chu b. 1985
Connie Chu, b. 1985

Connie Huang b. 1989
Connie Huang, b. 1989

Connie Chung b. 1985
Connie Chung, b. 1985

Connie Koh b. 1987
Connie Koh, b. 1987

Connie Kwok b. 1982
Connie Kwok, b. 1982

Connie Liu b. 1995
Connie Liu, b. 1995

Connie Chung b. 1998
Connie Chung, b. 1998

Connie Moy b. 1984
Connie Moy, b. 1984

Connie Wu b. 1994
Connie Wu, b. 1994

Connie Chung b. 1980
Connie Chung, b. 1980

Connie Yang b. 1991
Connie Yang, b. 1991

Connie Jang b. 1989
Connie Jang, b. 1989

Group photo of Connie Chung in 2023 with women named after her.

It was on my first day of school on the College of California, Berkeley, after I began to comprehend there have been extra of us on the market.

Instantly, I used to be amongst a pupil physique that was virtually 50 % Asian. Whereas I used to be standing in line to order a sandwich on the campus cafe, I heard a voice from throughout the room: “Connie Wang!”

I swiveled to see who it could possibly be — I didn’t know anybody but. However the particular person wasn’t shouting at me. As a substitute, a woman standing close by waved in response.

Afterward, I went again to my dorm room and typed “Connie” into the campus Fb. I discovered the woman from the sandwich line — and I additionally discovered many, many extra. In my freshman class alone, there was a Connie Zheng, a Connie Guo, a Connie Xu, just a few Connie Chengs, and a number of Connie Wangs. No surprise the college e-mail deal with I’d wished had been taken.

All this time, I’d thought the story of my title was particular; little did I do know it was the story of a era.

In contrast to most individuals, I used to be in a position to decide my very own title.

I already had one, in fact — Xiaokang, my Chinese language title, given to me by my maternal grandfather, which referred to the Communist Occasion’s dedication to reaching “a reasonably affluent society.” However in 1990, my dad and mom determined to lift me in the USA, and all of us had an opportunity to decide on a brand new identification. They requested for my 3-year-old’s opinion: What would I prefer to be known as on this new place? I answered, the story goes, with Connie, after that fairly “ayi,” or auntie, we watched on TV.

That ayi was Constance Yu-Hwa Chung, or, because the world is aware of her, Connie Chung. Ms. Chung had rejoined CBS Information a 12 months earlier; she would ultimately change into the primary Asian and second lady to be an anchor of a significant weekday information program, showing nightly alongside Dan Moderately to ship the world’s largest information occasions to Individuals at dwelling, my household included.

On the time, my mom, Qing Li, was recalibrating her expectations for what her life would seem like. She’d been an editor of nonfiction books again in China, however discovered the prospect of trying to climb the skilled ladder in the USA with out mastery of the language deeply intimidating. Some buddies instructed her that different Chinese language immigrants had discovered employment at eating places, so she tried that for some time, however the job was boring, and she or he give up. A lot of her early years in America felt each formidable and boring, isolating and overwhelming.

What gave her some consolation, although, was seeing Ms. Chung on TV. Right here was a girl with a face like hers, with nice style in garments, who wore lovely make-up and had fashionable hair, but requested aggressive questions of highly effective individuals, most of whom didn’t appear to deal with Ms. Chung any otherwise due to her look.

Connie Chung internet hosting the “CBS Night Information” in 1991, the 12 months after the creator named herself Connie.

Connie Chung was trusted and revered — qualities that my mom herself had loved in China. So after I picked my title, my mother readily acceded. What extra may she hope for from her personal Connie?

What my household didn’t know was {that a} model of the identical situation was taking part in out in dwelling rooms and hospitals throughout the nation. Asian American households from the late Seventies via the mid-’90s — principally Chinese language, all new immigrants — had thought of the futures of their new child daughters and, impressed by one of many few acquainted faces on their TVs, signed their very own needs, hopes and ambitions onto numerous delivery certificates within the type of a single title: Connie.

Right now, it’s frequent to hitch a company, take a brand new job or attend a convention and meet an Asian Connie; at each office I’ve been one of some. And with every of them, I’ve discovered it’s at all times the identical story: No, it’s not brief for Constance. Sure, they grew up watching Connie Chung on TV. And, yeah — it is bizarre, isn’t it, that they’ve by no means met a non-Asian Connie their age both?

As a result of Connie isn’t a well-liked title — not now, not after I selected it and never for a lot of many years prior. In response to the Social Safety Administration, “Connie” peaked within the Fifties, when it was the fortieth hottest title for women. In 1987, the 12 months I used to be born, even “Priscilla” was extra fashionable. And nonetheless, I’ve had an enormously troublesome time securing social media handles, usernames and firm e-mail addresses.

Through the years, I’ve come to comprehend that I’m a part of a phenomenon: Era Connie. By now, I’ve talked to dozens of Connies inside this sisterhood, and discovered we’ve got a outstanding quantity in frequent — that it isn’t by likelihood that our households and, specifically, our moms, all gravitated towards the identical title. All of us have our personal tales about how our households got here to the USA, and why they selected the title they did. However we’re additionally half of a bigger story: concerning the patterns that kind from particular immigration insurance policies, and the ripple results that one lady on TV prompted simply by being there, doing her job.

Connie Chung was born in 1946 in Washington, D.C., the final of 10 youngsters, 5 of whom died in infancy. Her household fled China in 1945; she was the primary to be born on this nation.

From the hospital, her father, an official with the Chinese language Nationalist Authorities, phoned her 4 older sisters at dwelling to choose a reputation for his or her new sibling. Flipping via {a magazine}, they landed at random on Constance Moore, an Iowa-born starlet who had made her title in wartime musicals. However nobody ever known as the brand new child Constance, Ms. Chung instructed me: “It was at all times Connie.”



Connie Chung, heart in a pink gown, together with her sisters.

In school, Ms. Chung discovered her biology main uninspiring, and ultimately secured an internship on Capitol Hill. The tempo was thrilling, and she or he determined to modify to journalism. She picked tv as a result of it was novel and, with TV stations within the Nineteen Sixties being pushed to diversify their ranks, she figured she might need a greater likelihood. Ms. Chung was shortly employed by a neighborhood information station and shortly afterward started working at CBS Information as a correspondent below Walter Cronkite.

“To start with, what helped me get the job was being a minority and a girl. However from that second it was a detriment,” Ms. Chung mentioned. “I used to be working in a newsroom dominated by white males, I used to be overlaying white males in Washington — a male-dominated metropolis and authorities. It was shocking and disconcerting for all of them, together with me.”

It could possibly be lonely at occasions, particularly initially. “I used to be simply attempting to maintain my head above water,” Ms. Chung mentioned. What she couldn’t have recognized is what number of Asian households have been already paying consideration.

A type of households was the Lius, who moved from China to Ohio in 1989. Connie Liu’s mom, Bing Han, who had been a nurse in China, ended up working at Panda Categorical and 4 Seasons lodges as a housekeeper. Ms. Liu, 28, relayed what her mom had lately instructed her about when it got here time to call her daughter: “I wished you to be recognized,” her mom mentioned, at a time when “quite a lot of Asian females weren’t recognized.” “She was like, ‘I need to discover essentially the most bold particular person round and title my baby after them,’” Ms. Liu mentioned. “For an Asian feminine, that was principally solely Connie Chung.”

One other household, the Chungs (no relation to the information anchor), immigrated from South Korea to Arizona within the early ’80s and labored odd jobs to get by. Connie Chung, 37, instructed me her dad and mom didn’t communicate quite a lot of English at dwelling, and didn’t know quite a lot of American names. Once they have been naming their daughter, they regarded to TV for inspiration, and zeroed in on the girl who had simply joined NBC as an anchor for a number of primetime specials. “It is a title we all know with a face we acknowledge that appears like us,” Ms. Chung mentioned of her dad and mom’ pondering. “And our child goes to be American, and hopefully obtain issues like this lady did.”

Connie Chung Joe was born in 1977, making her, at 45, one of many oldest of the Connies I interviewed for this text. On the time, the unique Connie Chung had left her job at CBS and had returned to native information stations to achieve extra anchor expertise. She was working in Los Angeles, a giant market, however was not but a family title. Even so, she “was the success story,” mentioned Ms. Joe.

Ms. Joe was given the title Connie by her mother, one in every of a handful of girls to graduate from her medical college in South Korea. Ms. Joe’s mom “got here from a world the place she didn’t really feel like she may have the identical degree of success and energy” as a girl, her daughter instructed me. However America may be completely different, her mother thought. Folks noticed Connie Chung each night time on TV; she was well-known, and fashionable. She’d made it.

There was an extra attraction to the title: Most of the Mandarin-speaking Connies I spoke to identified that the Mandarin for “wholesome woman” — 康妮 “kang ni” — sounds an terrible lot like Connie. I heard comparable tales from Cantonese audio system and, in a single case, from a daughter of Vietnamese immigrants. The readily pronounceable “Connie” sat on the heart of a Venn diagram of prolonged households again dwelling and new classmates, academics and friends in America; it was a bridge that helped ease the transition to a brand new dwelling.

Ms. Ho mentioned she discovered
Connie Chung’s story
“inspiring” and wished
“our daughter to be simply as
profitable as she is.”
Ms. Han mentioned she named
her daughter Connie “as a result of
I additionally wished her to be
well-known and excellent.”
Ms. Xu mentioned she and her
husband selected the title
Connie as a result of it was
straightforward to pronounce. “Additionally,
we watched TV,” she mentioned.
“We noticed Connie.”

My circle of relatives’s first cease in America was the Midwest: particularly, the College of Nebraska, Lincoln, the place my father was finding out as a part of the primary wave of Chinese language college students who have been allowed to go away mainland China to earn superior levels.

Throughout my father’s second 12 months, whereas my mom was visiting, he attended a protest on campus in solidarity with the scholars congregating in Tiananmen Sq.. When a photograph from the protest ran in The Lincoln Star, somebody anonymously knowledgeable my father’s dad and mom again in Qingdao of what their son was as much as — an ambiguous menace that indicated my household was being watched. And so, together with so many different Chinese language grad college students finding out in the USA, my dad and mom took benefit of a fast-track inexperienced card supply in response to what in China is euphemistically known as the “June 4 Incident.” What was imagined to be a stint in America become a everlasting transfer for my dad and mom, who have been extremely educated, politically shaken and, apparently, caught.

After incomes his Ph.D., my father discovered work in his subject, as an engineer at tech corporations. My mom ultimately grew to become an accountant, organizing numbers as an alternative of phrases into sense. Her resentment at having to do that was matched solely by her insistence that I ought to by no means need to. She pressured me to realize in class, like different Chinese language moms I knew, however she gave me the liberty to go in any course so long as I could possibly be good at it, and helpful. The opposite women in my courses at weekend Chinese language college, whose names have been cut up between the favored names of the Eighties (Jessica, Amy, Jennifer) or the phonetic spellings of their Chinese language names (Meng, Qian, Yun), marveled on the latitude I loved.

The story of Era Connie is a small slice of the story of Asian immigration to the USA, a lot of which isn’t distinctive to us. Modifications to immigration legislation in 1965 introduced a wave of bold and comparatively lucky households to this nation who then needed to discover new footholds, typically in majority-white communities. Their American-born youngsters have been all raised with the goals, worries and aspirations that kind out of profound tradition shock.

However the names these dad and mom gave their youngsters represented so many alternative approaches to dealing with this shock: holding on, letting go, diving in, reaching out for a lifeline. I don’t suppose it’s a coincidence that each one the Connies I spoke to explain their moms in comparable phrases: as leaders, courageous, athletic, inventive, profitable, idealistic, succesful. These mothers have been architects, editors and medical professionals, who’d typically needed to abandon their careers and reinvent themselves upon shifting to a brand new nation, who regarded on the tv and noticed how issues may be completely different for his or her daughters.

I clearly understood none of this after I inked the title Connie onto the paper Social Safety card I received when my household grew to become everlasting residents. However at the moment, after I have a look at my very own title, I see each footnote.

In early 2020, whereas engaged on a memoir, I cold-emailed Connie Chung. To my shock, she responded. Throughout our first telephone dialog, she was sharp, hilarious and right down to earth. She excused herself to get a cocktail from her husband (Maury!), and regaled me with tales about her short-lived speak present “Weekends With Maury and Connie,” which she had closed out by singing an off-key torch track (the one video I may discover of it on YouTube is titled “Connie Chung has misplaced it”). She was engaged on some new tasks, caring for members of the family, and, clearly, paying shut consideration to the information (had I heard about this Covid factor?).

“It’s so good to fulfill one other Connie,” she instructed me towards the tip of our name. However didn’t you understand? I responded. There are such a lot of of us out right here. Named after you. “You’re kidding,” she mentioned. “No manner.”

“If you first instructed me about this phenomenon, I used to be flabbergasted,” Ms. Chung mentioned once we talked once more this spring. “I used to be really floored.” I instructed her what dozens of Connies had instructed me: that they have been happy with being related to Ms. Chung, that they have been grateful that they at all times knew there was a Connie who had gone first.



Connie Chung, CBS Information reporter, at age 25.

I shared with Ms. Chung what Connie Chung — the one from Arizona — had instructed me, about how different youngsters used to make enjoyable of her title when she was rising up. “As a child, that simply made me need to die inside,” she mentioned. When the Arizona Ms. Chung married, she was wanting to take her husband’s final title. “I used to be like, ‘I am not going to be Connie Chung anymore!’”

However as time handed, she discovered herself pondering otherwise about what her dad and mom have been attempting to do after they named her. “I’ve thought so much about it,” she mentioned, “and what it could be like for me to immigrate to a very new nation and have all these ideas and concepts about what my life can be like and reaching the American dream and the hopes that I’d have for my children.” A 12 months later, she modified her title again.

Ms. Chung — the unique — grew quiet. “I believe what I’m about to say could be very Chinese language, however I noticed myself as a employee bee who was attempting to outlive in a enterprise that was very brutal,” she mentioned. She’d by no means considered how she was being seen by others: “I used to be simply clawing my manner via quite a lot of hazing, and sexual and racial reactions to my existence. I used to be clueless, actually. I couldn’t think about what anybody was perceiving as a viewer, or if anybody observed.”

I’ve lengthy had a fraught relationship with the concept of illustration. Seeing ourselves — or slightly, the wealthiest, finest resourced, most assimilated amongst us — on journal covers and tv screens is the smallest image of our standing as Individuals, and comes with its personal types of exclusion and bigotry. When headlines celebrating Asian American movies with Asian American casts run subsequent to articles about Asian American disenfranchisement and poverty, illustration can really feel notably empty.

I do know all that — however I additionally know its energy: how a single particular person can change into a automobile for therefore many others’ most private hopes; how they will discover, in her, a way of belonging that’s in any other case in brief provide.

Just a few weeks later, as a part of a photograph shoot for this text, The New York Instances invited Connie Chung right into a studio with 10 different Connies named after her. The group went out to dinner afterward. I couldn’t make the cross-country flight in time to attend, and it wasn’t till after the session was over, and I listened to the recordings of the day, that it grew to become clear what an emotional second we had inadvertently engineered.

Connie Chung, heart, surrounded by 10 members of Era Connie. Clockwise from high proper, Connie Yang, Connie Tang, Connie Moy, Connie Solar, Connie Chang, Connie Kwok, Connie Huang, Connie Jang, Connie Wang and Connie Koh.

Ms. Chung went round shaking fingers. The Connies took turns sharing their tales — how their dad and mom got here to America, what life was like after they have been born, and the way their moms discovered consolation in Ms. Chung’s presence on TV. Connie Solar, 42, talked about how her mother tried meticulously to recreate Ms. Chung’s coiffure, and the way she gave her daughter the title Connie partly as a gesture of hope that she would communicate excellent English — as a result of “she did not know that that was like an automated factor in the event you’re born right here, proper?”

When it was her flip, Connie Koh instructed Ms. Chung how she, not her dad and mom, selected the title Connie. “Out of your crib?” Ms. Chung mentioned, joking. “How did you try this?” The room laughed, however by then Ms. Koh, 35, had began to tear up. She defined she’d picked the title after school, when she determined she wanted an American title along with her Korean title, Keon Yeong. “You’re an iconic particular person,” she instructed Ms. Chung, who had additionally grown teary.

Ms. Koh instructed me later that she grew to become emotional as a result of she remembered how, when she selected her title, she was determined to have the ability to get up for herself as Ms. Chung had all through her profession. “Assembly Connie Chung felt like a miracle,” Ms. Koh wrote to me in an e-mail.

On the photograph shoot, the photographer, Connie Aramaki, 46, instructed Ms. Chung that she’d initially thought her dad and mom had chosen the title Connie as a result of they wished their daughter to change into a journalist like Ms. Chung. Now, she’d come to understand what they really meant: “What it means is your dad and mom need you to work exhausting, and be courageous, and take probabilities.”

Ms. Chung’s voice, usually clear and assured, was barely audible on the tape I’d been despatched: “I did try this,” she mentioned quietly, and I felt one thing unfasten in my chest.

America at the moment seems very completely different from when Connie Chung was born, and even when my household immigrated. Younger Asian Individuals could by no means expertise the identical kind of loneliness that Ms. Chung did, or the longing that my mom harbored for the reassurance that issues may be okay, that her daughters would have a combating likelihood in ways in which she had given up on for herself.

None of this is sufficient to declare victory; the hurdles stay so excessive for therefore many. However it’s a small triumph that I can now think about my baby wanting again with curiosity on the times when a single information anchor may matter so, a lot.

Connie Wang is the creator of “Oh My Mom! A Memoir in 9 Adventures.”

Images of Connie Chung from CBS Photograph Archive, by way of Getty Photographs.

Extra reporting by Tenzin Tsagong.
Produced by Alicia P.Q. Wittmeyer, Jacqueline Bates, Jessia Ma and Ana Becker.