Titles are very important in Taiwanese society. It is incredibly impolite to call someone by their given name, unless you are close friends or colleagues. Even then a nickname might be more common among friends and surname-plus-title among colleagues. Another option is to say the full name: surname + given name.
My Chinese name is Fu Ke-en (傅可恩). My efforts to get people to call me Ke-en generally fail. Generally, I end up getting called either “Mr. Fu” (傅先生)or “teacher Fu” (傅老師). The best I can do now that I am a college professor is to insist on the less formal “teacher” as opposed to “professor” (教授). So, that is how I normally introduce myself: “teacher fu.”
Today, when a colleague introduced me to the owner of her favorite bubble tea stand, the owner asked me how she should address me. I replied, as usual, “teacher Fu” (傅老師). To which she replied: “Oh, Professor Fu. Too bad, you’ll never become a full professor!” The joke being that “Professor Fu” sounds exactly like the term for “associate professor” (副教授). That’s what you get for ordering bubble tea near a university!
Postscript: An interesting exception to the “no given name” rule is among those with greater English proficiency. Such people will use adopted English names even among Chinese-speaking friends.
{names, politeness, title, 台灣, 語言}