Chinese Names

A Chinese friend of mine just gave birth to a baby. Some old friends got together visiting the new mom and the newborn today. The topic of naming the children in Chinese came up. Some believe it is meaningless since no documents would identify them in our native language. Most parents, including me, make the pinyin (English pronunciation) of the Chinese names as the kids' middle name. We are hoping it would remind our children that they are Chinese. Yet many argue pinyin does not really represent the actual Chinese characters well since each pronunciation stand for multiple characters.

For those of us that have double citizenship, one way to give our children some Chinese identification is to get them the passports of our native countries -- of course with their Chinese names. But you know what? No matter how much you do and how hard you try, your kids may still not able to identify themselves in Chinese.

I remember there was once a third generation Chinese American told me his grandfather gave him a Chinese name. He forgot how to pronounce it and could not write it, but he described it to me that "the middle character is like a long box broken into three square with a stoke on the top, the last character means success." If you are Chinese, you should be able to guess it.