Today we were finally able to settle on a Chinese name for Leona. It has been quite the headache-process. We originally decided to wait until she was born so that we could go to a fortune teller and get auspicious names to choose from based on her '8 characters' - this was in order to keep some peace with his parents, because if we did not follow this method they'd be less than unhappy (less than happy? whatever: super unhappy).
So Judge and his mom went to the fortune teller a week and a bit ago, and got a list, but most of the names sucked. Only one was semi-ok, so Judge and I opted for that one (otherwise we'd have to pay another NT1500 for another list). By this point we were already exasperated about it all. Then, Judge's dad did some calculating himself on the names, and came up with the name we had selected not being good, and that rather another one (喬安~ which is like Joanne) was excellent. We however do not want her to have a Chinese English name, we want her to have a Chinese Chinese name, as she is Taiwanese. A Chinese English name would make people think immediately of her as a foreigner and she will have that enough as it is being hapa haole.
There was a bit of back and forth regarding this issue - where there was some pressure for us to just accept Joanne as his parents liked it. Thankfully Judge's dad calculated some more and gave us two sets of lists of 2nd and 3rd characters we could choose from (we were wishing he had just done this from the start so we could have saved us some $$$).
I immediately was drawn to 雨 (rain) on the first list for the 2nd character, and Judge was in 100% agreement. Then it was time to choose the 3rd character. Most of them were names of rivers in China~. Not wonderful.
Judge suggested 靜 (quiet/still), but 雨靜 (yu3 jing4) sounds a lot like Eugene to me, and so at first I was not so gung ho about it. However, no other characters looked and sounded good to us, and the meaning of 雨靜 was one I was totally on board with as I love rain - no matter how hard it's pouring I feel it brings great peace to me (unless I have to go out into it and ride a scooter etc) so 雨靜 is fantastic. Plus it's a good balance to her very strong and fiery personality (like Leona is great in my opinion as it sounds really elegant while it's meaning is totally strong). And lastly, in English she's called Leona, so as long as 雨靜 is good in Chinese then no-one will think about Eugene.
The real selling moment for me on the name though, was when Judge shared what the name felt like to him - quite graceful, like the persona of one of our good friends (Maxwell Ivy - for those of you who know her you'll now know exactly what he means). SOLD.
BUT we were thrown for a loop as Judge's dad had to calculate again based on this suggestion. We waited in suspense for two days, because if it got turned down we'd faint with exasperation. Thankfully his dad came up with that 雨靜 is as auspicious for Leona as 喬安 (yay!!), and so today we got to go make it official at the household registration office: She got registered and got her Taiwanese citizenship ID number...she is now officially Taiwanese! Lucky girl.
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In other events, I used an alternate method of taking my evening bath today - rather than leaving Leona sleeping on the bed in the bedroom and the doors open, I brought her into the bathroom and plunked her down in the baby-bathtub (which she hasn't used yet) so I could not worry she'd wake up. She woke up. BUT she was totally patient. Just looking around until I was done and picked her up, and *then* she started crying because she wanted to eat.
And now for the bane of Judge's existence: Leona's umbilical cord stump has yet to fall off. She is 22 days old today. It is dry and the skin around it is not red, so I'm not worried about it (I searched online and found a study that found stumps to fall off in the range of 8 to 22 days...so we're going beyond the range but). Judge has been suggesting lately that we should perhaps bring her to the doctor to have it checked out. I say we can wait as I really think it's fine.
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oh I hated the umbilical stump... I was very happy when one day Ali was kicking his legs and somehow managed to kick it (I didn't know how flexible babies were!) right off! Hehe. As long as you're putting that alcohol stuff and powder on it, it should safe enough. That's probably what the doctor would say too.
ReplyDeleteI love the chinese name!! It sounds beautiful. And I didn't think of Eugene until you said it. We've been thinking of going to get a Chinese name for our son, even though its not necessary, we'd like him to have a real Chinese name since he was born here. :) And i bet Leona will feel happy during the typhoons, i hope her name will her a quiet strength during the rainy days and a measure of peace. :)
Hehe - I hope she kicks hers off soon too~!
ReplyDeleteI think getting a proper Chinese name is a great idea, as you said he was born here~ :D