What's in your name?

Aiyo... just finished one tag and on to another.. Hin-Lerk's mummy tagged me on this. But a much simpler tag to do. Ok here goes.. as you know mummy and daddy are both "banana's" ie yellow on the outside, white in the inside, so in the selection of your name, mummy and daddy picked the English name, while Ah Kong was given the honour to help suggest a few Chinese names for you.

When mummy was 16 weeks pregnant, Dr Ng confirmed that you were a boy. So mummy went online to look for names and borrowed books from friends and even ee-ee on baby names. We finally narrowed down to Ethan, Dylan, Elijah and Gerald and they all got rejected. Everyone could think of how the name could be wrongly pronounced of made fun of. After looking around further, daddy and I finally agreed on Evan. Mummy started calling you "Evan" the moment we agreed on your name.Well, the original meaning that made us pick this name was "Little Warrior" in Celtic. But today upon receiving this "assignment" I also discovered that Evan in Welsh means "The Lord is gracious" and that it's a variant to the name John.Hhmm.. new discovery.

Next is the second part of your name. The Chinese name: Khai Siong. Ah Kong bought this book specially to look for a name for you:


He saw a lot of names that sounded nice. In fact this book is very interesting (someone told me so) as it will tell you the name and which person with that name that was famous, rich, kind etc etc. So began the search for a suitable name for you. I think the search for a nice Chinese name for you was the more difficult part. There are so many "pantang-larang" to abide by. For one, it must not be the same of any relative. So some words could not be used. On top of that, even similar sounding words, could not be used such as "jia" which sounds like mummy's "chia". And something about the number of strokes to suit your name.

As your ETA was fast approaching, Ah Ma had to push Ah Kong to quickly come up with some good suggestions. Otherwise, you won't have a name when you were born. So finally, Ah Kong and daddy came up with 万凯雄. Daddy even became a pro at using the Internet to look for words, based on the pinyin along with the meaning.
Ahem, that's why this morning when presented with this assignment, I had to quickly get the writing and meaning from daddy. Ok, ok.. I will admit (again) I do not know how to write your name in Chinese still. Like I had mentioned before, we also had to screen through the names to ensure that the selected name cannot be made into some joke. We also needed to decide how to spell your name. We weren't too keen on the pinyin spelling, so we changed it.

As for the meaning, Ban 万 is simple to write and simply means 10,000. Next time if when you learn to play mahjong, you will definitely know this word! As for Khai 凯, it means victorious. And Siong 雄 means hero. So somehow, your name has a lot of "heroes and warriors".
There, the meaning of Evan Ban Khai Siong.


**Start Copy**
Proposition: What is the meaning of your kid’s name?
Requirements: write about what or how or why you giving the name to your kids.
Quantity: FIVE PEOPLE.
Tag Mode:1st - You leave their blog and post link and add to the list below.
2nd - Let the blogger you want to tag know they been tagged by comment in their blog or etc.
1) Msaufong - Meaning Of SQ & Kiki’s name
2) Miche - My ACB
3) Sweetpea - My Little Fire
4) Yvonne - The Meaning of Ryan’s Name
5) ShoppingMum - Justin & Isabellea
6) Judy - Meaning of the name Terry
7) LiL’deviL - Mini Hawke
8) Mrs. Wallace Notes - My Daugther Name
9) Raising Belle - Monkey Girl
10) Hin Lerk's Diary - The meaning of his name
11) Our Baby Evan - What's in your name?

And so I will tag:
*Poh Kien - Tell us the meaning of Lynus
*Joanne - Haha.. you got tagged again..
*Tiffany - How about a tale on Joshua?
*Joyce - Muahaha.. first time I get to tag you.. and you are the one who let the cat out of the bag!

Short of 1 but I leave others to be tagged..

Choosing a name

Dear Evan,

Ever wondered how long it took mummy and daddy to choose a name for you? Well.. for us it took us a couple of months to zero in on the perfect name for our baby. Of course, first we need to know the gender of the baby.

Well, on our 16th weeks check-up, Dr Ng asked if we wanted to know your gender. Of course we wanted to know. That doesn't mean that we will be able to select a name for you: you would no longer be referred to as "baby" when mummy talks to you. Best of all... we could start shopping for you. Of course that didn't meant that we hadn't started buying things for you before that!

Anyway, as mummy and daddy are not able to read a single word of Chinese, we got you Ah Kong to help with your Chinese name. That certainly took him a long time, as we needed to screen through the long list and also we needed to ensure that no one can come up with something funny from your name on top of making sure that the name is not similar as any of our relatives. When Ah Kong and daddy finally came up with a name for you, we needed to decide how to spell the name too.

On the other hand, we took only a short while to narrow down the choices of English names for you. Of course we had a lot of helpful (not) inputs from friends and family too. Such as Sardine Ban, Kaya Ban.. and the list goes on you name all types of buns, they've been suggested! Thus, the name of this blog: myrotiban.

Anyway, finally mummy and daddy agreed on Evan Ban Khai Siong. Um.. it took me a long time to remember how to spell your Chinese name. Sadly, I still don't know how to write it in Chinese. But I promise you, I will learn how to write it.. after I have learnt how to write mine and daddy's properly... hopefully soon...