Tuesday, December 11, 2007

Behind the name

By the way, last time I started to tell you about Chinese naming and mentioned the meanings of names. So let's go over what we know about Chinese naming so far:

1. Each name has three characters, starting last name first.
2. For some reason, my Angkong on my father's side has a table where each of us is named a certain way for our first name. For my generation, that character is 仁, pronounced 'rén' in Mandarin.
3. Each person is given a name which embodies a sort of positive, good meaning, that will be bestowed upon the child. Well, I'd hope it's a good meaning. You don't want to name your child something like lollygagging numbskull.

Now, let's go over the meaning.

My name in Chinese, given to me by my parents and my Angkong, is 林仁義.
The pronunciation is lín rén yì.

The individual meanings are -woods/forest, -benevolence, -righteousness




Hell to the yes.

1 comment:

xposition said...

Nice! In Japanese, your name would be Miyoshi or Hitoyoshi Hayashi. Your first name read as a word would be jingi, translated as moral code or humanity and justice. Actually, "Rimu" works too.