No more "Christian name, sir?" in Kent, UK

[Randy Alexander]

On Tue, Mar 30, 2010 at 11:58 AM, Judy Prince
<jbalizsprince at googlemail.com> wrote:
> So *Ni* (pronounced "knee") represents your surname Need, and *Ba*
> represents your first name, Barbara. Â Pretty neat!

See below.

> My Chinese professor at U of Michigan did as your teacher did. Â Thereafter
> unable to shake the beauty of spoken and written Chinese, I've had many
> years with many Chinese tutors, each of whom has given me a Chinese name.
> Â My favourite for its beautiful look and sound was the first: Â Pei [2nd
> tone] Yu [4th tone] Hwei [4th tone]. Â *Pei* (pronounced "pay", represents
> the first letter of my surname Prince, and the other two names are very rare
> classical Chinese words for "fragrant" and "bud").
>
> With my last Chicago tutor I decided to give myself a Chinese name, "An
> Dao", meaning "Peace Way". Â He laughed and refused to allow it, saying that
> two-word names were only for men.

This is news to me.  My wife's name has two characters, and I know
lots and lots of other girls and women with two-character names.

(Still further below.)

> My tutor here in Norfolk named me
> "Laughing *Pei*" (I've actually forgotten the other 2 Chinese words!).
>
> BTW, why was Chinese a "funny language requirement"?
>
> On 29 March 2010 22:46, Barbara Need <bhneed at gmail.com> wrote:
>> It goes the other way as well. When I studied Chinese for my funny
>> language requirement at UChicago, my teacher named Ni3 Ba4 (I think I
>> have the tones right).

If you did get them right, that's pretty funny.  It sounds like "your dad"!

ni3 = you
ba4 = dad

(Personal pronouns very often drop the genitive marker, de.)

>> I don't remember the character for my personal
>> name, but the family name character has three ears. Other students
>> also had Chinese names that were clearly based on the sounds of their
>> own names.

Three ears?  OK, now I see what's happening.  That's nie4.

--
Randy Alexander
Jilin City, China
Blogs:
Manchu studies: http://www.sinoglot.com/manchu
Chinese characters: http://www.sinoglot.com/yuwen
Language in China (group blog): http://www.sinoglot.com/blog

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