Made in China by Simon Gjeroe

Author:Simon Gjeroe [Gjeroe, Simon]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Earnshaw Books
Published: 2021-01-13T03:20:28+00:00

11

What’s in a name?

In China, quite a lot actually. Choosing the name of our first child was more complicated than we could have ever imagined. And as most of our Chinese friends and acquaintances have consulted a fortune teller, and even if they haven’t directly chosen a name on his recommendation, they have at least consulted him on the name they were thinking about giving the new born baby, we could not deviate from this. For babies with Chinese mothers and foreign fathers (or the other way around), I think in most cases they will be given both a Chinese and a foreign name. Mine did.

Chinese names always carry a meaning and its most often something good and pleasant. Girl’s names normally relates to beauty, flowers, scent or pureness. Boys names are usually connected with power, bravery or wealth. Some of the most common boy’s names in China are Wei, meaning ‘great’, Qiang meaning ‘strong’, and Jun meaning ‘army’, so we wanted to avoid those. But first we would have to settle on the last name.

All foreigners in China will at some point get a made-up Chinese name. It could be arbitrarily chosen by a Chinese friend or teacher and is usually based on similar sounds or sometimes the direct meaning of the foreign name. Mine is Ge Ximeng. It was chosen by my first Chinese teacher in Chengdu, Liu Laoshi, and is based on the sounds. As it would be ridiculous to use my “invented” Chinese last name for the boys, they got my wife’s last name, Deng, as in Deng Xiaoping (no relation as far as we know). In this type of situation, some Chinese in-laws, however, are afraid of the loss of face they will occur on account of their grandchildren having the same last name as the mother, because it can suggest that their daughter has had illegitimate children.

Delving a little into Fu’s family history, however, revealed a very interesting story. Fu’s grandfather, who was a famous children’s doctor of traditional Chinese medicine, was adopted into the Deng family, when his parents gave him up to their best friends. Whereas the Yang family had plenty of sons, the Deng family had none, so an agreement was made that the young boy Shaoxian would simply change address and family name. So Fu’s actual ancestors are within the Yang family clan, and as such they believe to be descendants of the Qiang people, a Central Asian nomadic tribe still inhabiting areas of northwestern Sichuan. This could maybe help to explain some of Fu’s family members with curly hair and warrior like built.

Regardless, Luka became Deng Lujia (where ‘jia’-珈 is a kind of precious jade that women wore on the top of their head in ancient times), and Louis became Deng Luyi (signifying that he should both be able to be hard working, but also know when to relax, because the character for ‘yi’ (驛) means a resting place, or a place for changing horses), but not before

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