Names

You aren’t just “Someone”

/ edebock / 2 Comments

For the past while, almost everyone who has left a comment on my blog has been identified as either “Someone” or “Anonymous”. This bothered me because each and every one of you is important to me. I want to know who you are and I want to be able to address you by name when I reply.

It took me longer than it should have to figure out what the problem was, but I think (I hope) that it’s now been resolved. It appears that something in my settings had been inadvertently changed and commenters were no longer being asked to identify themselves by name and email address. Without that information, WordPress simply calls you “Someone” or “Anonymous”.

There are several valid reasons for asking commenters to identify themselves and leave their email addresses. The biggest concern is that requiring less information makes it extremely easy for spam bots to leave comments and almost impossible to filter them out. This can become a nightmare for a blogger.

I know that some of you might be hesitant about leaving your email addresses and given the number of cyber security issues that one hears about these days, I can hardly blame you. I want to assure you, however, that your email address will not be shared with anyone other than myself and that you will not receive any unsolicited emails. If you’re uncomfortable giving your full name, please feel free to use your first name only or even a nickname if you prefer.

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Choosing your Grandma name

/ edebock / 6 Comments

When this hilarious video showed up on my Facebook newsfeed this morning, I couldn’t help laughing out loud! Those of us who have grandchildren have all faced the question… What will your grandchildren call you?

Next Tuesday I will have been a grandmother for ten whole years. That’s right! Our Drew is hitting the double digits! I can’t believe how quickly that decade has flown by. It seems like only yesterday that I was thinking about what I would want him to call me.

Growing up, I had a Gran and a Nana. I only have one clear memory of my Gran who passed away when I was five. Though she was younger than I am now, she had a serious heart condition and all I remember is a frail little lady who needed help from the car to the house when she and Grandad came for a visit. Tiny and frail wasn’t the kind of grandmother I hoped to be, so that name didn’t resonate with me. My Nana was robust and a woman known for speaking her mind. I think I must have inherited that trait from her! She was very much a part of my childhood and lived to see my first two children. The only reason I didn’t want to be called Nana was that some of my childhood friends didn’t know what a Nana was. I wanted a name that clearly identified me as a grandmother, but like the lady in the video, I wanted one that sounded younger and hipper than Granny.

I didn’t want to be called Grandma because Drew’s other grandmother already had three grandchildren who called her Grandma or Tiny Grandma because of her small stature. I wanted to choose a name that was different from hers and I most certainly didn’t want to end up being Big Grandma!

After considering many possibilities, I settled on just plain Gram. It’s simple and easy to pronounce, or so I thought. I was thrilled when Drew, at the age of 15 months, began to call me Am. Of course, we didn’t realize then that that was a symptom of a severe phonological disorder that caused him to drop the initial sounds off almost every word. As he began speech therapy and he and his Mom worked diligently at home, we began to see a marked improvement in his speech and finally the wonderful day came when he called me Gram! Thankfully, you wouldn’t know today that there had ever been a problem with his speech.

Now there are five children who call me Gram. Distance prevents us from all getting together very often so the photo is over a year old, but these are my treasures. That’s Drew in the top left hand corner with his siblings in front of him and their cousins to the right.

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Do you have grandchildren? What do they call you? How did you choose your Grandma name? If you don’t have grandchildren yet, but hope to, have you thought about what you would like them to call you?

Naming Lavita

/ edebock / 3 Comments

Perhaps it’s just an extension of my love of words, but I find the meaning and origin of names fascinating. Long before we had our first child, Richard and I had two boys names picked out, Matthew and Nathan. Interestingly, they both mean “gift of God” and since God blessed us with two sons, we were able to use them both. We had a much harder time choosing names for our daughters. I’ve always been partial to girl’s names that end in A and, after much deliberation, we settled on Janina for our first daughter. A derivative of Jane, it too means “gift of God”! Though the spelling of our second daughter’s name is very similar to mine, Elaine means “light” and Melaina means “dark”! Like our other three, however, she is also a “gift of God” and that’s the meaning of her middle name, Jean!

In addition to naming our children, I’ve helped name a few pets along the way, but I never thought that I’d name a gastrostomy tube; a tube inserted through a patient’s abdomen to deliver nutrition directly to her stomach! Over the past few months, I’ve made contact with two other bloggers who are also neuroendocrine cancer patients and one of them, Lizbeth, recently wrote a post asking readers to help her choose a name for the tube that provides her with vital nutrition. She was tired of simply referring to it as “tube”.

I immediately began to search for girls names that meant “giver of life”, but I didn’t find one that I liked, so I changed my search slightly and began to look for names that simply meant “life”. I quickly came up with three of them and they even ended in A; Olivia, Livia and Lavita. I sent them off to Lizbeth and waited to see what would happen. Here’s what her next blog post said:

A fellow blogger, Elaine, has gave me a name that I’m rather struck on.  The name Elaine has suggested means life.  Rather apt.  For me the tube gives me a better quality of life…  It provides me with my essential nutrients and vitamins – my daily steak and chips or fresh fruit salad if you get my meaning.  For many people with a tube it is an essential lifeline and the only source of nourishment.  

The name I have chosen is Lavita.

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The pot finally boiled!

/ edebock / 12 Comments

In my last post I compared waiting for our daughter to give birth to the proverbial watched pot that never boils. Yesterday was particularly grueling. We made the half hour trip to the hospital twice. On both occasions, Melaina was given morphine and gravol and sent home to rest. By the second visit she was finally beginning to make progress but she was still a long way from delivering. They might have kept her at the hospital had the maternity ward not been swamped but instead, the doctor told us to come back at 8 o’clock this morning or sooner if need be.

It’s a good thing we didn’t wait until 8:00! It was shortly before 4:00 when I heard, “Mom, there’s no way I’m going to make it til morning” from the top of the stairs. Less than ten minutes later, she, Aaron and I were out the door leaving Grandpa and the two older children tucked snugly in their beds. As we cruised through the silent city streets, I timed her contractions… four minutes… four minutes… two minutes…

After all that waiting, when things started happening, they happened fast and at 8:23 this morning Simon Gil was born! He weighed in at 7 lb. 11 oz.

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Simon’s middle name, Gil, is a Hebrew name that means joy and this wee boy definitely filled our day with joy!

Richard and I made one more trip back to the hospital this afternoon to introduce Drew and Jami-Lee to their baby brother. They were thrilled!

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Now they’re tucked into their beds but sleep evades them. Tomorrow is another exciting day. Mommy will come home from the hospital with baby Simon and a new chapter of their family story begins!

My name is Guang

/ edebock / 6 Comments

Richard and I are still somewhat uncomfortable with the fact that our students are required to use English names at school but I find the stories behind these names fascinating. Many were simply given them by their first foreign English teacher while others chose from a list of names when they first came into the school to register for classes.

Some choose a name that sounds similar to their Chinese name. Bradley’s real name is Li Borou. According to Chinese tradition, his family name comes first but reversed, it would be Borou Li which sounds a bit like Bradley. Now that he’s considering going to Canada to study, however, he’s concerned that Bradley Li (pronounced Lee) will sound odd so he has started signing his name, Brad Li.

Others are influenced by the entertainment world. Grace chose the name of a favourite character in an American television drama and was tickled to discover that I have a fondness for the name because it was also my grandmother’s.

Big Jacky, easily the tallest Chinese person I’ve ever seen, is class monitor for one of my university classes. His duties include stopping by the office when he arrives to pick up the key and unlock the classroom. He also insists on carrying my books up to the sixth floor for me every time! When I asked him how he got his English name, he explained that he’s a fan of Hong Kong actor and martial artist, Jackie Chan, who was actually born Chan Kong-sang.

Sissi (pronounced Cee Cee) was a nickname given to one of Richard’s students by her grandmother when she was just a little girl. Since it’s easy for even we foreigners to pronounce, she decided to use it instead of adopting a different English name. I think it suits her.

One of the most unusual names we’ve encountered is Dragon but his choice made perfect sense once he explained it to me. Apparently his Chinese name means little dragon.

Their English names aren’t particularly important to most our university students who are simply taking an English course because it’s a graduation requirement. When the year is over, many of them will never use the name again. When they wrote their midterm exams, I discovered that Patricia didn’t even know how to spell her English name! It’s a different story for our students who are preparing to study overseas, however. Recognizing that they will be using this name for several years, possibly the rest of their lives for those who dream of making Canada their permanent home, some of them aren’t satisfied with a name that was chosen hastily or thrust upon them by a teacher they’d only just met. Stacie is such a student. Last time I talked to her, she was considering becoming Monique!

Our school isn’t the only one that requires its students to choose an English name. Apparently this is common practice across China. When we met Michael, one of our "angels", in Jinan last week, I asked him how he got his English name and he explained that he’s a fan of both Michael Jordan and Michael Jackson.

After hearing many of these stories, I began to wonder what I would do if I had to choose a Chinese name. I’ve always been fascinated by the meaning of names so I wondered if my name, which means shining light, might have a Chinese counterpart. Over lunch one day, I asked some of our students if they knew of a Chinese girl’s name that meant light. Sure enough, Sissi told me that her mother’s name, Guang (pronounced Gwong), was the one I was looking for. Though no one actually calls me by this name, I’ve decided to adopt it as my Chinese name. I even like the look of its Chinese character. It reminds me of a burning candle or a lighthouse.

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Since Chinese women take their husband’s family name when they marry, I guess I’m actually Meng Guang because Richard’s Munchkin class (his 12 year olds) recently decided that he should have a Chinese name too. They dubbed him Meng Fei, naming him after a popular TV anchorman who gained nation-wide fame as host of the popular blind date reality show "If You Are the One"!

Linda, Kate and Cheryl

/ edebock / 5 Comments

The first thing a student does when they enrol in one of our English courses is adopt an English name. I’m not completely comfortable with the idea of asking them to give up such an integral part of their identity as their real name but it certainly does make life easier for us. Many of their Chinese names are virtually impossible for us to pronounce. I’m going to have a hard enough time remembering everyone’s English names let alone trying to learn those!

Though most of the students choose fairly traditional names, there are some unusual ones as well. I have a Dragon in one of my classes and Richard teaches a girl who calls herself Memory.

We came on staff at the beginning of the second semester so most of our students already had English names but a few new ones have enrolled this term. At the beginning of last night’s class, one of the office staff showed up at the classroom door with two new recruits. Please help them choose English names, she asked.

Richard and I always had trouble choosing girls’ names. We could have named several sons without any difficulty but, in both cases, it took us the better part of nine months to choose names for our daughters. I didn’t have nine months last night! Twenty-five other students were waiting expectantly for class to begin and I had two beautiful young girls to name!

I looked at their Chinese names, hoping to come up with something remotely similar. Written in Pinyin (the system used to write Chinese words using the Roman alphabet), the first girl was called Liiiao. I suggested Lee, Leah, Lynn or Linda. She chose my sister’s name, Linda. Yuqing was more difficult. Off the top of my head, I couldn’t think of a single English name that was anywhere close to that so I started reciting the first names that came to mind that weren’t already on the class list. She chose Kate. At some point, perhaps I’ll have the opportunity to explain to her that Kate is the name of a popular English princess. I think she’d like that.

Today, while Richard and I were in the office prepping for upcoming classes another new student arrived on the scene. Since she’ll be in one of Richard’s classes, he was given the honour of naming her. Having been privy to some of the names he suggested for our daughters in bygone years, I jumped in to help! Fortunately, there’s also a book in the office that includes a list of English names. Again, I suggested that we look for one that was somewhat similar to her Chinese name, Shuying. Richard suggested Cheryl which she quickly agreed to. I think she was beyond nervous and simply wanted to get the enrolment process over with! I hope she actually likes her name.

Perhaps before we leave here, I should turn the tables and ask my students to give me a Chinese name. I wonder what they’d choose?