Whats in a Name?
- Kei Lau
- Apr 9, 2019
- 2 min read
To our family, multilingualism is more than just the learning of languages. It is also about culture and identity. We want our son to understand and appreciate his Chinese and Italian roots. Therefore when we were choosing names for our baby, we decided to give him an Italian and Chinese name.
As everyone knows, coming up with a baby name is not an easy task. Deciding to have a name in two different languages is even more challenging. There are additional considerations, for example: how it sounds, is it easy to pronounce, is it easy to spell, will kids make fun of the name in future, the meaning of the name, so on and so forth.
I have observed several different ways multicultural families name their children:
1. Choosing a name that has two versions or is translated. For example "Ann" in English is "安(An)" in Chinese.
2. Choosing a different name in parent's languages that compliment each other in terms of sound.
3. Choosing a completely different name that is not in the parent's language (perhaps in society's language).
In our case, we started off by choosing an Italian name we both liked the sound of and that was easy to pronounce, easy to spell and unlikely to be made fun of by kids. Then my parents helped us with choosing a Chinese name to match the sound of the Italian first name. We wanted Chinese name that had a good meaning and when translated into English did not sound funny and was easy to spell.
The one additional question we faced with choosing a Chinese name is which surname to use. Whether or not to use the mother's Chinese surname, to make up a completely new surname that is a translation of the father's surname or to not have a Chinese surname at all. We decided to use my surname to base the Chinese name off.
How did you come up with your child's name?
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