About My Name
I wrote this for two reasons. First, because of the breadth of my public engagements, my surname calls for clarification. Second, my name, Simone, invites curiosity, which I take as an occasion for reflection at the intersection of cultures, identity, belonging, and selfhood, themes tied to part of my study on nationalism, ethnicity, and globalization.
APART FROM LIFE, a resilient frame, and an intellect shaped by the singular wiring of a neurodivergent mind, the only inheritance my father bestowed upon me at birth was a surname: Mao. In later years, as I traveled across nations, that surname would often bring to people’s minds a great figure who indelibly shaped China’s modern statehood, and whose leadership left a profound mark on twentieth-century movements of national liberation, decolonialization, and anti-fascist struggle, as well as on broader projects of modern state-building across the developing world, standing alongside other founding figures such as Jawaharlal Nehru, Mahatma Gandhi, and Mustafa Kemal Atatürk in reshaping the destinies of their nations. Of course, we are bound by name alone, not by lineage; our connection ends with the name.
In truth, however much I may have wished to sidestep the storms a name can summon, I know that my reputation and my thought—and all the reinterpretations and misreadings they invite—will, in the end, be remembered by it.
But I walk ahead of my name.
My own identity is SIMONE. My more familiar name, Simone—now recognizable to many—was not given to me until my first day of studying French in school. I did not so much choose it as feel chosen by it. Simone grants me a sense of belonging that my birth name, Zhenting, had never quite bestowed.
When I live in Canada and across the world, it is Simone by which I am known. It entered rooms, printed on the programmes, and carried me onto international stages. In moments when I wrestled with my sense of self amid the challenges of cross-cultural life—experimenting with names, even turning toward my mother’s line—it was Simone that steadied me. It is Simone by which I am remembered: the name will travel farther, and ring clearer, than my surname ever could.
A name may also be a lineage of spirit. When I studied the history of Jewish philosophy, I learned that my name has a Classical Hebrew root, later Hellenized as in the Septuagint (Hebrew שִׁמְעוֹן, Ancient Greek: Συμεών), meaning “God heard; to listen to God’s voice.” In the Bible, Simon was the first to bear the cross for Jesus. While studying classics in Italy, I adopted the Italianized feminine form, Simona. People from across the world often mention female philosophers Simone de Beauvoir and Simone Weil (I first read their works in adolescence and was illuminated by their intellectual independence; in some subtle ways, I felt this name had found me), and smile, “Now we have another Simone.” In Paris, I once stood before the resting place of Simone Veil in the Panthéon, reflecting on her legacy of human dignity, justice, and peace, values that mirror my own commitments and bind us, in spirit, across generations. I am glad that my name is linked to the memory of these remarkable women of intellectual and moral distinction.
Choosing the Self: Simone
I feel valued and always grateful when people ask whether I prefer Simone or Zhenting (Yes, I prefer Simone), and especially when they make the very effort to pronounce my Chinese birth name: /maʊ tʂən tʰiŋ/. At my Harvard Commencement, I was asked to provide its phonetic spelling: Zhen-ting is pronounced Jen-tin, Jen like Jenna; M-ao, ao like our. In Chinese, Zhen means "uplifting", suggesting "hands reaching toward the stars" in its ancient pictographic imagination; Ting means "an elegant woman in a pavilion".
Different cultures navigate names differently. In Japan, India, Korea, and so on, romanized birth names are common. Among many Asian Americans, English names are often adopted. Some interpret this as a reflection of Western dominance or cultural insecurity. That argument might assume that every Anglophone or Francophone name is born of a yielding to forces larger than oneself, the result of forced assimilation rather than conscious choice. I do not share that assumption.
My surname, Mao, came into the world before I did. It carries the weight of history and the memory of a people. It marks lineage and historical legacy. I did not choose it. It was given to me, as history is given to us all.
Simone, however, was not given in the same way. It is an identification. It grew with me through languages, through study, through the long crossings between cultures. It came to name the life and the mind I was forming. As I have said, "I did not so much choose it as feel chosen by it." In this, I am reminded of Baruch Spinoza, who adopted his Latinized name, Benedictus de Spinoza, as a fully considered act of self-determination, aligning his identity with the philosophical path he chose. This choice reflected his philosophical vocation and self-understanding. His true identity. Through this name, he situated himself at the intersection of two great intellectual traditions, Jewish and Greco-Roman, and deliberately aligned himself with Latin, the philosophical legacy of the latter, and the more secular, free-thinking communities of the Dutch Republic. He asserted the independence of his philosophy from any preexisting metaphysical systems inherited from both Greco-Roman and conventional Jewish thought—systems (say worldviews) that, in the known world of his era, were the only ones ever seriously treated and consciously examined (I believe that, had he had the opportunity to get more familiar with them, he would have studied the philosophies of American Indigenous peoples or of Islam with equal impartiality). In choosing Benedictus, Spinoza claimed an identity as a philosopher fully responsible for his own thought, grounded neither solely in ancestry nor in preceding traditions. Spinoza’s story mirrors mine. So too, my choice of Simone is a deliberate act of self-determination inseparable from the life I have lived and the traditions to which I belong. If Mao speaks of passive inheritance, Simone speaks of self-formed vocation, my true identity. If one signifies ethnicity, the other signifies my consciousness and philosophical calling. A journey of individuation developed out of the collective undifferentiated, unexamined unconscious.
Zhenting remains my beginning. It holds the cadence of my native culture, the imagery of its characters, and the quiet hopes of those who first named me. I have not turned away from it. But a beginning is not always a destination, nor my public identity.
My education was shaped profoundly by Western philosophy and deeply marked by the classical worlds of Greece and Rome. The multicultural environment of Canada nurtured my inner life, and my sense of agency enabled me to extend a broad perspective with impartiality and openness to other civilizations. The question for me, therefore, is not one of cultural dominance or submission. It is an expression of agency and individual liberty. A name, when freely chosen, can be an act of authorship. In choosing Simone, I did not renounce where I come from. I affirmed who I am becoming. It represents my intellectual identity (rather than my bloodline) —my consciousness, my vocation, and my philosophy—and reflects the way I view the world and the way I wish to be understood and recognized within it.
It is the name by which I think, by which I write, and by which I wish to be understood.
How People May Refer to Me
There are some ways I would like to be introduced:
Simone Mao (born Zhenting Mao) is …
Simone Mao, whose birth name is Zhenting Mao, is…
Zhenting Mao, usually referred to as Simone Mao, …
Zhenting Mao, known publicly as Simone Mao, …