Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. When you think of the name Connie, who do you think of? There's Cornelius McGillicuddy better known as Connie Mack, the longest-serving manager in major league baseball history. Maybe you think of the legendary drummer, Connie Kay, who was a member of the Modern Jazz Quartet, and has been associated with everyone from Thelonious Monk to Ray Charles. Maybe, especially if you've long been tuned into the news, you think of Connie Chung, the first person of Asian descent to anchor a major American news network broadcast, and the first woman to co-anchor the CBS Evening News. She's also been an anchor and reporter for other major networks, including NBC, CNN, and more.

Over the years journalist Connie Wang has come to realize that there is an entire generation of other Asian American women named Connie after Connie Chung. She wrote about it recently for The New York Times, maybe you saw that article. Connie Wang joins us now. Hey, Connie, thanks for coming on. Welcome to WNYC.

Connie Wang: It's so good to be here. Thanks for having me.

Brian Lehrer: We will open up the phones. Listeners, first priority goes out to anyone who was also named Connie after Connie Chung because the point of the article is, yes, there's a whole bunch of out there.

Not sure if we'll have anybody in that particular group in the audience right now, but if so, tell us your story about why your parents named you after her in particular, and how you feel it's impacted your life to have that name and be named after Connie Chung if you've been. 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. Maybe you're one of the parents who gave one of your daughters that name.

All right, Connie. What's the premise? Tell us your story. It took you a while to figure out that you were not alone in this category, right?

Connie Wang: Absolutely. It was always that icebreaker anecdote or party thing that I used to tell people that I named myself after Connie Chung because it seems like such an unbelievable story. My family emigrated when I was two and a half years old, and when we got the opportunity to-- or rather, let me rephrase that.

When we found out we were staying, and what was supposed to be a vacation ended up being really a move across the world, we got to figure out our new identities. When we were filling out our permanent residencies, I got to pick a name for myself. I thought about how I knew American names, and the English that I did know, and that mostly came from TV, so I'm actually very, very grateful to my parents for not letting me go down the path of picking Elmo or Michelangelo, my other favorite TV personalities.

Connie Chung was a face I remember, and so I picked Connie. It sounded like my Chinese name too. I'm so happy and grateful that my parents were like, "Yes, that's a great one." My mom especially, she was like, "Connie Chung is a good person to name yourself after." I did not realize that this was not a very unique story until I went to college, and for the first time surrounded by many other Asian American women, and among them, many of them were named Connie.

Brian Lehrer: The moment you realize you might be part of a whole generation of Connies was on your first day of college at UC Berkeley. Can you tell us that story?

Connie Wang: Yes, that's right. I was getting a sandwich, and I didn't know a single person. I was from out of state and at UC, there's not a lot of people who did grow up in California. I didn't know a single person, and I heard from across the room someone just yelling Connie Wang. I thought like, "What is happening? I don't know anyone here," but they weren't shouting at me, actually. The girl who was standing right in front of me was named Connie Wang.

I went back to my dorm, and I looked up just Connie in the internal Facebook. At the time, we just were getting Facebook, and I realized that there were so many Connies, and Asian Connies at that. I found that one particular Connie Wang, but I found a couple more too, so that was the first time I realized like, "Wow, we are absolutely not alone."

Brian Lehrer: That's pretty funny. To back up one step, the story you were telling of choosing the name, it wasn't even that your parents gave you the name. You chose the name Connie upon immigrating to the US, yes?

Connie Wang: Well, that's what they tell me. I don't have a recollection of this, but I like to brag that I did have a hand in choosing my own name.

Brian Lehrer: You write in your article about how Connie Chung got her name. Can you tell us that story?

Connie Wang: Yes. Connie Chung was the last sibling born to her family, and when she was born-- she was the first one actually born in the United States, so I think her dad called home from the hospital, and asked her older siblings to pick a name for their new sister. They were flipping through a movie magazine at the time, and they landed on Constance Moore, and they just said, "Constance, why not," but as Connie Chung tells it, she's never gone by Constance, always been Connie.

Brian Lehrer: You write, "According to the Social Security Administration, Connie peaked in the 1950s when it was the 40th most popular name for girls." Can you give us the demographic data for generation Connie? What years were they born in roughly, and are they mostly Chinese American like Connie Chung, or have you found Connies from other backgrounds?

Connie Wang: Brian, that's a great question. The data for how popular Connie was in late 1970s through the early 1990s is not super accurate, but from the websites that I have found some information on, Connie was hugely unpopular, anywhere ranking from the 2,000s to the 4,000s most popular name, which is to say not very popular at all.

On one website, I actually found that the name Priscilla was more popular, which is-- you very rarely hear the name Priscillas. When Connie Chung was named, the name Constance was quite popular. It wasn't unheard of. When I was growing up, I could actually find little keychains or those vanity license plates with the name Connie. It wasn't an unpopular name.

Brian Lehrer: There were just enough.

Connie Wang: There were just enough of us, but most of them were one generation out, so I used to get a lot of, "Oh, my aunt's named Connie," but I didn't know a single other Connie who was my age until I went to college.

Brian Lehrer: Let's take a phone call from a Lisa in Huntington. You're on WNYC. Hi, Lisa.

Lisa: Hi. My name is Lisa.

Brian Lehrer: Yes, we've got you.

Lisa: I'm so excited. I'm the first time and the long time. I'm a long-time listener and the first-time listener.

Brian Lehrer: Glad you're on.

Lisa: I came to US in 1992, and my daughter was born in 1994. I named my daughter Connie, not because of the Connie Chung, although I know about her. I named her because of the [unintelligible 00:07:24] is exactly in Chinese means healthy girl. The girl Connie is healthy. [unintelligible 00:07:32] is the girl, so [unintelligible 00:07:33] means very good meaning.

Brian Lehrer: Another good reason to name a girl Connie, healthy girl in Mandarin. Is that in Mandarin?

Lisa: Yes, yes.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you, Lisa. Thank you so much. You touch on that in your article, right?

Connie Wang: Yes, yes. That's a pretty common secondary reason for a lot of people. Actually, the Con in Connie is part of my name too, my Chinese name. I found the ease of being able to say Connie transcends just in Chinese. I talk to a lot of Vietnamese Connies, Korean Connies.

There's a lot of Korean Connie Chungs out there. A lot of them cite that the pronunciation of Connie is so easy for family members back home, and obviously, it's easy for Americans here. It's like an incredible bridge for that assimilation process, which was so, so, so important for when their parents named them.

Brian Lehrer: I see that in early 2020, you cold-called the real Connie Chung, the television Connie Chung, and spoke to her for the first time. You write that she said to you, "It's so nice to meet another Connie." Were you really the first person to break the news to her that there's an entire Generation Connie, as you call it, in your piece?

Connie Wang: You know what? I'm not going to go back on what Connie Chung said. She did tell me that I was the first person to tell her, but when I was speaking with various other Connies for this New York Times story, a few of them mentioned that they had had the opportunity to meet her, and had told them that they were also named after her. Maybe Connie Chung, the original, is doing me a little bit of flattery by telling me that I was the first one, but I don't know if she really understood the impact that she had. I think that that reaction was incredibly genuine.

She didn't realize that people were paying attention and not only paying attention, but were warmed by her presence on their television sets, and that her legacy is somewhat of a living legacy. All the Connies that are named after her are proof of that impact that she's had.

Brian Lehrer: Have you thought about or written about the whole idea of immigrants americanizing their names or their kids' names? I can say even in my own case, and I'm third generation in this country, I was named after a great grandfather whose name was Bora in Yiddish, and that's what he went by, but my parents didn't want to give me that Yiddish name that would be so uncommon. They were looking for other B names, and that's how I became Brian. It happens in all kinds of traditions.

Connie Wang: Oh, absolutely.

Brian Lehrer: I think there's a backlash against it now, where it's probably happening less and people want to more hold on to their identities from whatever culture of origin.

Connie Wang: Absolutely. I think that the pendulum always swings back, but I have to always think about what my parents were experiencing when they first came to the United States and realize that this was going to be their new home. The desire to hold on to your heritage almost seemed like a no-brainer. They were Chinese. They are Chinese. I was going to be raised Chinese. What they were more concerned about was whether they were going to have an easy time, or as easy of a time in the United States as they did in China, and so they wanted to make that landing as soft as possible. I don't think that their story is all too unique either.

The thing that I found fascinating among the Connies and the moms who named their daughters Connies, was that a lot of them had to abandon their careers that they used to have in China, and a lot of those careers didn't translate to the United States. Work in the fine arts or literature or using Mandarin in Chinese as their jobs. That lack of a creative outlet, a lack of professional momentum, they kind of saw Connie Chung as proof that someone like them can make it here. A very simple proof is very obvious proof, but they saw Connie Chung on TV as someone who had done it before. There was a little bit of a nod to that, but it would have been so easy to just like keep my Chinese name or find another popular name during the '80s, which was like Jessica or Ashley, [unintelligible 00:11:59], but they chose Connie very deliberately.

Brian Lehrer: In that context, you write in your article that you've long had a fraught relationship with the idea of representation itself. Can you tell us more about what makes you feel ambivalent about representation, how you mean it, and how Connie Chung's success plays into that?

Connie Wang: Yes, of course. I think this is a really important question because the conversation about representation is everywhere, whether Asian Americans are represented in movies, or on top of mastheads, or in the entrepreneurial group, who gets money to start businesses.

In reporting at the story, and also just like reporting the book I just wrote, Oh My Mother, which touches on my own immigration story, I've really come to realize that I'm part of a very, very fortunate subsection of Asian immigrants, who were selected to come to this country because our parents were highly educated, they were relatively fortunate. They were also from a culture and a country that gave them a very particular set of ideas about the size of your family, the dangers of sticking your neck out, the dangers of student protests.

My parents are in the United States directly because of Tiananmen Square. Because of all of these interrelated reasons, we've had a relatively easier time finding success, finding financial stability in the United States, climbing that corporate ladder. When I hear conversations about representation, especially when it comes to Asian Americans, what makes me nervous is when that's all we focus on because Asian America is a gigantic and very, very diverse group of people. My story is hardly representative of all Asian Americans.

When we talk about representation, and the person who represents us, like has my face, it makes me a little nervous that I and the people who look like me are the only ones among Asian America who get to benefit from these conversations.

Brian Lehrer: This is Asian American or API History Month. I'm curious what else you're thinking about this month besides what people have been able to read of yours in your article about the name Connie.

Connie Wang: Yes. To expand your repertoire of what Asian America looks like, I think a lot of people probably know someone who was a Chinese immigrant or a Japanese immigrant, or Korean immigrant, but do you know anyone who's Bangladeshi or Hmong? Do you know anyone who is fifth or sixth-generation Asian American? We are a very special subsection of America where we're growing. We're hugely diverse. If you're going to spend time thinking about Asian America, this may expand your repertoire a little bit. [chuckles]

Brian Lehrer: Good. I see you recently published a memoir about your relationship traveling with your mother, and so we come back to another day after Mother's Day item, your book is titled Oh My Mother. Do you want to take about a minute, we have about a minute left, and give your book a blurb?

Connie Wang: Oh, yes, of course. Thanks, Brian. I actually first reached out to Connie Chung when I was starting research on my memoir. This book is really a product of a conversation I had with my mother who was really bemoaning the idea that so many stories about immigrants, and Asian immigrants in particular, were stories about suffering and resilience. That kind of struck me as surprising because her story has been full of very, very hard and difficult moments, but she looked at me and she was like, "I see it as one big adventure," and what a joy it is to see her life as an adventure.

This book is the consequence of me taking the time to step into her shoes and to see it all as an adventure. Oh My Mother is actually a Chinese phrase. That means it's almost like, "Oh my God." It's like an expletive that you say, but I like Oh My Mother a little bit better because my mom is the first person I think of when I'm experiencing those oh my God moments. Each book is about an oh my God moment in our lives, through travel, through our relationship, through us finding ourselves, or actually not finding ourselves as we explore this world through our adventure stories.

Brian Lehrer: There we leave it for today with Connie Wang, journalist of a recent New York Times op-ed that's getting a lot of note on a whole generation of women named Connie and author of the new book, Oh My Mother! A Memoir in Nine Adventures. Connie, thanks so much for coming on.

Connie Wang: Thanks for having me, Brian.

Brian Lehrer: That's the Brian Lehrer Show for today. I guess if I was a girl, I might have been named Brianna, and today we say goodbye to Brian Lehrer Show intern Brianna Brady. She's been with us this whole school year, and like our other intern, Trinity Lopez, who we said goodbye to recently, has contributed many newsworthy and creative ideas and done some really good writing for the show as well. Brianna, we hope you learned a lot here, and it was worth your while, and good luck, Brianna Brady, and thank you from the Brian Lehrer Show team. Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Stay tuned for Alison Stewart.

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