In the 1970's, Rhode Island accepted many thousands of Vietnamese boat people, and some soon started filtering into URI. At that time, I made a point of taking at least one lab section by myself, just to let me know what was happening in the labs.
On the first day of class, I had the lab roster, and began calling out the names--Adams, John; Becker, Amy; Carlyle, Stephen. My eyes skipped down a couple of names, and there it was. Duc, Phuc. Clearly a Vietnamese. How on Earth to call out his name?
I made a valiant attempt.
"Mr., ah, Duke?"
There was the slightest pause, then he smiled and said. "Ah, excuse me, no. Pronounce just like spelled." Then he said it.
I have to give that class a lot of credit. It took an overwhelming effort, but nobody laughed. I could see that people's faces were so red they were in danger of passing out, but nobody laughed. And neither did I, although it almost gave me a hernia.
To me, the remarkable thing was that Mr. Duc had gotten that far in America without somebody pointing out the difficulty.
I've been very fond of this story over the years, but as I've gotten into AARP territory, I began to think that maybe I must have imagined it. NOBODY could really be named Phuc Duc. So I googled it, and sure enough, there were a couple of Phuc Duc's in the United States, and quite a few in Viet Nam. It also turns out the "Phuc Duc" describes a quality of Vietnamese Buddhism-the virtues acquired in a previous reincarnation.
So here's to the virtuous Mr. Duc.
