What's In a Name?

I don't think I've ever been more fascinated by names than I have been since moving to China. While there's more often than not a distinction between what is a "name" in English and what is a "word", in Chinese, at least from an outside perspective, there is much less of a difference. In English a name usually doesn't have a direct meaning, primarily because it was derived from a language other than English. Obviously exceptions exist, most notably those among us lucky enough to have been named after a virtue (Chastity? Verity? Patience? all women, of course). Generally, though, we are able to distinguish and we look at the text "Richard" and think "male person" and look at "queen" and think "royalty" (or "drag").

Rarely when we look at names do we think of meaning. I don't think of my own name "Samuel" and think "Oh, derived from Shemu'el, Hebrew for 'name of God' or 'God has heard'". However much I may appreciate the meaning of my name or the situation that called my Mom to choose it for me, it's not the first thing that comes to mind.

My Chinese name, on the other hand,  is a different story. I have a two-character name (most surnames are a single character and given names are one or two characters). It was given to me by my Chinese professor at North Central. We were given the option of an artfully transliterated name that sounded like our English name, or a new name entirely. I thought of the process like a birth, and opted for a new name entirely.

My name is 林風 (Lin Feng)，translated directly the first character means "woods", and the second character means "wind". Overall it comes off as something akin to "the wind going through the woods". When I see my name written, I see "woods", and I see "wind", and the name has meaning to me, and a meaning that I like, at that.

The names of my coworkers are no different. There's 刘天明 (Liu Tian Ming), for example, who sits behind me. Her last name Liu means "to see", a fairly common last name. Her first name Tian Ming (literally "heaven/sky and bright put together) means daybreak, or dawn. I can't help but wonder if their name is just a name to them, or if this meaning is embedded into it since all three of those characters appear frequently in what's read on a daily basis.

What's even more interesting to me is the names that Chinese people often choose for themselves in English. More often than not they pick a common name (Jessie, Jack, Eileen, John, James) that they like the sound of and go with it. Sometimes, they choose a name they like the meaning of. The coworker I mentioned earlier's English name is Ivy, chosen particularly for the plant. Another consultant who works here chose Apple as her name. Perhaps my favorite, though, is the consultant who sits across from me, Seven. I think I might actually have to name my first child after a number. Five or Six if it's a boy. Seven if it's a girl.

So, in short, go look up your name. It might mean something fun.