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A Rose by Any Name

Naming is a complicated art in China. But with the process of naming an infant left to persons other than parents, the odds of getting a mundane name are possibly higher. A good Chinese name shall have a good meaning, but some good names may not have great meanings and many great meaning characters cannot be used in a Chinese name. Readers will enjoy the struggle of the author to choose the "perfect" name for the daughter she adopted from China!

Three years ago, I sat in the passenger seat of the car, unable to stop staring at the three-month-old photograph of our six-month old daughter. The face was familiar somehow. An hour before, we laughed aloud at first sight of its expressive frown. "She's a pip!" I announced. Her eyes seemed locked to mine, communicating a tantalizing message that hovered just at the edge of my consciousness.

For almost nine months, we had argued baby names without resolution. The only blessing in this struggle was that the child referred to us from China, was almost certainly to be a girl, which delivered us from debating a universe of boys' names. The pinyin (a method of transcribing the sounds of Chinese into the letters of the Roman alphabet), for her Chinese name is "Yu Kai," which, when properly pronounced, means "Jade Victory." When improperly pronounced, however, it causes Chinese people's eyebrows to shoot up and knit in a way that has made us wonder if our daughter's name was similarly mispronounced right before her photograph was taken?

I assumed that my pronunciation of it would improve as time passed. But three years and two recent semesters of "Continuing Ed" Chinese later, and I still can't manage a string of the simplest Chinese phrases without stammering. And it has not helped me relax to learn that whenever I pronounce my daughter's Chinese name, which we incorporated as her legal middle name, I risk dubbing her with what translates into an unfortunate combination of nouns, beginning with "fish."

But from the start, I had persistent "naming issues." Should fathers enter into naming? I thought not. Did it temper my opinion that we were not likely to have a second opportunity to name a child? No. I was annoyed at his selfish obstruction of my selfishness in this regard, especially in the face of how it definitely was not helping to move the process along. The importance of naming is such a principle of the Chinese culture, I wanted to take as much care as Chinese parents would. They believe a child's destiny is affected by the name the child receives. Its characters should lend an agreeable meaning, as well as sound and look well together.

Naming is a complicated art in China. But with the process of naming an infant left to persons other than parents, the odds of getting a mundane name are possibly higher. I remember reading the story of an infant girl whose Chinese name, so cute to American ears, actually translated as, "No Name." This would not be a good name to keep. Also, a child could have a promising name by Chinese standards, that I might initially be tempted to reject for how it sounded to my foreign ears. So it was very important to know the correct translation of our daughter's name, before deciding whether or not to keep it.

Over months, we would share and discuss what we were learning about Chinese names, then return to floundering toward the center of the supposedly smaller hurdle of an American name. My husband's favorite was the name of a teacher I had in high school. A pretty woman outside the gym, on the job, her foot-on-your-neck teaching style and burning eyes could literally induce cramping and diarrhea across a room. I persevered through freshman year, but after that, got a doctor's note for emergencies when, fumbling and hyperventilating, I held it up between us. She hissed when its shadow struck her face. Not long after he first brought it up, I learned, to my horror, that her name's Chinese two-syllable counterpart is really quite common in China. I would agree to that name if the baby already came with it, but I'd probably need therapy later on.

Did I want to forfeit an American first name entirely, in favor of a chosen Chinese name? I considered it. Informed opinion claimed that potentially as perilous as accidentally sticking your child with a "bad" Chinese name, would be making up a name that "sounds Chinese"- something musical to American ears - without being cognizant of what it could mean in Chinese. Several times I read the explanation for what makes a Chinese combination of characters particularly "musical," and I simply did not get it. Clearly, the concept of what "sounds nice" is one of our cultural forks in the road. Neither was it as simple as choosing two pleasant-sounding syllables, and then looking up what characters went with them in a Chinese dictionary. Different Chinese characters can sound the same but mean different things, and many of these are not ever used for names.

My concern was for the future, when eventually, every child will ask her original name. Hopefully the parents will know it, and have a plausible explanation for why they did not keep it, if they did not. A child of average intelligence, realizing that Chinese names have definite meanings, would then be curious what her made-up "Chinese sounding" name means in Chinese, and there would be the risk. I bought the book, "Name Your Baby in Chinese," as one of several references. Though I liked my niece Megan's nickname, "Minga," which she no longer used, nowhere did I find those syllables recommended as suitable for a Chinese name. I found "Ming-Na," which disconcerted me further, for how it seemed both too close and yet, not close enough. I'm still not sure what-all "Ming-Ga" could mean, but that was precisely what worried me about it. I did not want to inadvertently name my daughter, "Hairy Teeth," or something. But I have met people who pulled syllables out of the air. I remember one mom who replaced her daughter's original name with one she created, which she shared with us. Then, facing the one Chinese person present, she chirped, "That's Chinese, isn't it?" He looked surprised, then relieved, when she just as quickly turned her attention elsewhere. It was a statement, not a question. In America, if we want to make up a name on a whim, we do. Is it culturally insensitive to invent an unauthentic "Chinese-y" name for its musicality, as defined by a differing culture? I think not, because in my experience, when that has occurred, contemplation of the question has not preceded it. Obviously, though, it was not an option for us.

The more I read, the more intimidating the whole naming process became. I would set one book down, and pick another up. I discovered a well-reasoned theory that suggested that families unaccustomed to the concept of adoption, might reach a comfort zone more quickly if an adopted child had a familiar name. Later on, the significance of the name might be an asset to the child as she forms an identity within the family. Several deceased relatives had lovely, old-fashioned names my husband despised. Neither did he like any combination of our mothers' names. And he didn't approve of 90's "made up" names from old family names, such as revamping "Ella" as "Ellary." For a few moments we agreed on "Vienna," because we both like the song, until we remembered it is also a sausage.

Worse yet, some of the material about names and naming seemed to make points that conflicted with other material. How was I supposed to know which was the final word on the matter? Should a Chinese name include a hyphen, or no hyphen? Something I read that seemed very authoritative, demanded that a two-character name's pinyin spelling requires a hyphen or the joining of the two syllables as one word. As a result, I was puzzled when our daughter's name lacked a hyphen. We're still not clear on that point. As it ended up, we adapted our daughter's original spelling "Yu Kai" to "Yukai" as a simple device, so that the two syllables could not be separated from each other in the future.

But had I realized during those first euphoric moments as I clutched the tiny photograph in the car, that the "Yu" part of her name was correctly pronounced with a falling tone and an "umlaut" sound, followed by "Kai" with the third tone, which starts high, dips and then rises high again, I'd have probably shrieked in despair at the vocal acrobatics that lay ahead. With Chinese people, I apologize for my pronunciation before I attempt it. If possible, I write it in pinyin, or show the little slip of paper I carry in my wallet with her "chop" mark of the characters. But back then, I didn't know, and I was thrilled with the meaning, especially the "victory" part, since all of the girls in the group had the same first character in their names. "Victory" certainly suited a child destined to make a family of a couple soon to celebrate their silver anniversary.

Naturally, the first thing I did when we arrived home, was to look for the two characters of her name in a book. I needed to see them listed together, preferably in a chapter of their own entitled, "The Best Name We Ever Heard Of, Use This One." I found the first character, and the book agreed that it meant "Jade." It suggested about six combinations of characters using that one as the first character. "Kai" was not there.

I found the character for "Kai," and the book agreed it meant, "victory." It suggested about six combinations of characters using that one, but her character for "Jade" was not there. Furthermore, the book regarded "Kai" as masculine in gender.

Did I need this? What could it mean? Could it be a mistake? How could it be a mistake? While in America it is currently trendy to give girls what used to be, boy's names, "Austin, Tyler, Emory," etc., I was pretty sure it hadn't caught on yet in China. What if we gave her that name, and down the road we met a Chinese guy who said, "Hey! That was my dad's name!" But the "Jade" character had gender as well. It was feminine. What guy would want this name? It didn't make sense. Was this one of the dreaded denigrating names I'd heard of?

I called someone in our travel group who'd gone to college in Taiwan and spoke Mandarin. She wasn't sure what to tell me, but promised she would ask a Chinese scholar she knew, what he thought of the two characters together as a girl's name. I didn't know what to tell people in the meantime, so I said we were still deciding whether we would use it or not. I didn't know what to expect, but I definitely did not expect her to call me back sounding so excited and pleased. It turned out, somehow I had missed a "finer point" in Chinese naming - the characters not only have to sound well and look well together, they actually "work" in combination, affecting each other. Yes, "Kai" was a strong name and so, was considered masculine, but it was in the secondary position. Combined with the first character, the feminine "Yu," the name offered strength and beauty together and therefore, was not just a "girl's" name, but, in his opinion, an "auspicious" one! In fact, my friend said, he told her that it is the name of a scholarly woman who is highly esteemed in their local community.

Well! I hung up, relieved, uplifted, delighted... and marveling at how anyone in China ever gets a name.

So I started sharing it around, and that is when I learned that there is challenge also in presenting it to non-Chinese speaking people. "Yukai," I say, lurching through an attempt to correctly pronounce it. "Yukai?" they echo back, applying the tone used in English for "questioning." But it is not used that way in Chinese. In Chinese, the tone they are using is called, the "second tone," and it does not appear in her name at all, so the correct response is: "Uh, no." But it is an answer that makes no sense at all to anyone who does not understand that in Chinese, vocal inflection doesn't enhance the word, it defines the word. As a result, "Yukai."/"Yukai?" "Yukai."/"Yukai?", easily spirals into a bad imitation of "Who's on First?" unless we say, "Yes, that's it."

But I wasn't thinking of her Chinese name as I sat in the front seat of the car. The message that I was sure was our deliverance, tugging at the corners of my mind, was all, at that point, that was keeping me from slamming my head against the dashboard in exasperation with our incompetence. How could we possibly handle the rest of this person's life's crises, when we couldn't even put a name to the face?

Then it actually whispered in my head---which, under other circumstances, would have been creepy, but on this day, was just another supernatural intervention. I knew it was "right" before I repeated it. My husband agreed immediately and that was it. We named our daughter for her eyebrows' resemblance to my husband's ornery pip of a grandmother's, who emigrated alone from Poland, and unexpectedly left us a $2000 savings bond after she died. It was money that we used toward the adoption. We enjoyed imagining Grandmom's reaction in heaven. "Oh, boys!" she would say, rolling her eyes, to hear of a Chinese great-granddaughter named for her.

But we weren't done yet, which was to be our undoing. The second part of our daughter's first name is the feminine form of my husband's grandfather's name, which is a family name repeated through generations. Between the names, we added a hyphen to denote, "One name, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all." All that angst, all that reading, all that discussion, led us to the name we finally agreed was perfect. It was worth the wait: unusual but not weird; conventional in its parts, forming an unconventional whole; yet it was unlikely to be misspelled. It would not be automatically shortened to an ugly or patronizing nickname, yet it offered numerous nickname possibilities, if desired. We congratulated ourselves on our cleverness, thoroughness and dedication, convinced we would live happily ever after, due in no small part to the outstanding gift of this name. Here's how it goes since:

"What's her name?"

"Mary-Charlotte."

"Hi, Mary!"

"Mary-Charlotte."

"I see." "What do you call her?"

So we're just hoping, when she asks us why on earth we put ourselves through what we did to name her this, that she also has Grand-mom's sense of humor.

Credits: Deb Wasserbach

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