Ben in Hong Kong©

Wednesday, August 29, 2007

"Kick Ass" Chinese Name

衛民斌 is my Chinese name for my bussiness cards, it is pronounced "Whyy Man Baen".

At the moment all the new office staff are being assigned their new names. In Chinese the name has a meaning independant of the characters used to construct it. It took me a while to get my head around, but basically a Chinese name can sound identical to another Chinese name, but the characters used to make it can give that name a visually different meaning on paper. (you follow me???)

Choosing a name is quite a complicated process and I recall my boss in a one hour meeting to finally pick mine. Thankfully, as of yet, none of the new staff have a name quite as cool as mine which translates as "Protector, soldier and poet". Apparently an ex governor of Hong Kong used to have the same symbols for his name. Big name shoes to fill!

bx

(you will only be able to see my Chinese name if you have Chinese graphics installed on your computer, just in case you are wondering why my name is three squares!)

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

three squares is a very nice name ... x

Anonymous said...

Sounds similar to the old red indian habit of taking a name from the first thing seen after a child was born.As in "two dogs barking"or something similar. Yours would have been"where's the bucket" as I think your mother wanted to be sick! Say goodnight Three Squares.x x

Anonymous said...

your weird Dad...

Anonymous said...

thanks Ben, have now sorted out my computer problems...x
And actually I was sick before you were born and not after....
I think he's a bit weird too....