William Low: Hello. My name is William Low, and if you were to meet me for the very first time, you may be surprised to find that I am Chinese. That is because my last name Low, L-O-W, really is an English last name. My family's last name was really supposed to be Lau, spelled L-A-U. It uses the same Chinese character, but the English spelling is different.

You see, when my father was a teenager, he came over to the United States as a paper son of an old family friend, a gentleman named Edward Low, who was a US citizen. When he came over to the United States, it wasn't a big deal to change his last name from Lau to Low because the Chinese character was really the same.

So there you have it, the inside story of my real last name. But if we were to ever happen to meet, please do call me by my English last name, William Low.