I am not Yue Han anymore

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Not in real life anyway. I’m not changing my screenname but it no longer reflects reality.

Those who have been here a long time may remember a snot-nosed punk named Ai\ Yue- Ha
who joined the Board lo those many years ago. After constructive/incessant criticism of “all the frickin’ punctuation,” I registered Ai Yue Han… with the wrong email address. So here I am now, Yue Han.

Where did the name come from? Well, I’m a student of Chinese, and Ai Yue Han is the name they gave me in high school. Yue Han is just turning the name John into Chinese sounds. The first word means “to make an appointment” and the second one means “writing brush.” Together it means nothing whatsoever.

It is the leading generic Westerner name. Si Yue Han (John Smith) is the main character in the second year textbook here at my college.

It sucks.

So from now on in Chinese class and probably in China as my major in Chinese Lit and Language carries me to various far-off locales, I am:

Ai Zhong Ren. For those who know & care about the tones, that’s 4th, 1st, 2nd BTW.

Zhong means loyalty. Ren means benevolence. It’s a very Confucian name, which I like because my English name was given by my religious parent for religious reasons. Cultural symmetry rocks.

Here is how it is written: http://gao.keenspace.com/images/me.gif

Why am I posting this? I dunno. Feel free to talk about whatever comes to mind here.

–John

2

Well, it’s your decision to change your name. I think it’s an important decision in your life… and why am I babbling? I don’t know anything!

But if it’s your decision to change it, then that’s what’s important.

3

Loyalty and benevolence. Good ideals to live up to. :slight_smile:

My name probably will never be changed. Just sounds like a holy hassle to alter something that, to me, isn’t that important. Besides, a certain historical continuity is important to me. I will be called the same when I die as when I was born.

As a minor question, do Chinese names usually begin with the family name (lastname-first, as it were)?

4

Yep. I kept the same surname (Ai) because most of the people in my class just call me Ai Xiansheng (Mr. Ai) 'cause they don’t know my given name anyway.

I wouldn’t have changed it just on a whim, but as the teacher who gave me the new name said “Everybody, as soon as they see your name, they know you’re a Westerner. The other people in your class, you can’t tell, they’re just like a Chinese name. We didn’t want to say anything because we didn’t know how attached you were to it.”

–John

5

I wouldn’t sweat it, dude. In the past 20 odd years, my Chinese name has gone through multiple incarnations. Wouldn’t be surprised if you have many more before one sticks. Most people still call me the nickname I was dubbed with my first week in Taiwan --ma ke (that’s 4th and 3rd tones, or “scoldable”)

6

I would like to make an appointment with your writing brush.

7

I always said your name in my head as “You! Juan!”. Which is kinda what it was. Like a Babelfish Chinese to Spanish to English translation.

8

I knew the ke but had to look up the ma on zhongwen.com. Glad I did or I wouldn’t have gotten the pun on ma3ke4 as the Sinicization of Mark. Or is that a coincidence?

You got the pronunciation pretty close, too.

–John
*Oversimplified. Don’t smite me, linguists.

9

Cool stuff, Yue Han. Reminds me of a book I found once about transliterating your name into Japanese (I worked in a travel bookstore). My best choice was ji fu rei, which apparently can be taken to mean “one who chases after beautiful women”.

Worked for me. :smiley:

10

very cool. those are good qualities to live up to. when taking my name to a different language i just go with what my name means, and then go with that.

for example: rocking chair, so i would go with what ever rocking chair is in whatever language i’m using.