Allen Say: Hello. My name is Allen Say. Say is not really a Japanese name. It's an odd name, because it's a name that my father had invented. My father was a North Korean orphan who was saved by an English family, and he was reared in Shanghai, China. And when he grew up, he made up his name, Say, and when he married my mother in Japan, my mother found the two Japanese characters to fit the name, meaning clear well, and it should be really, in a Japanese way, pronounced KE O EE, but it's read as Say. Then, my father Anglicized this to S-A-Y in the phonetic way. In Japan, it should be spelled S-E-I-I, but I'm stuck with the name Say, and I never had the fifty dollars to go to city hall to change the name when I was younger, so here I am, still hanging on to the same name.