I know it’s common for people adopting to keep the child’s Chinese name as the middle name. However we are not adopting.
I am half-Chinese. My mom is from Taiwan. Her English name is [name]Clare[/name], but she kept her Chinese name as her middle name, which is Juo Lan (which means like an [name]Orchid[/name]). My sister and I both have all american names and we are not bilingual. I, however, have taken 3 years of Chinese in college and plan on enrolling my future kids into the Chinese immersion programs offered in our area.
My fiance’ and I were thinking of giving our children Chinese middle names. I thought it would be a nice way to honor my Chinese half and would be beneficial for our kids since when they are learning Chinese since they can use their Chinese name/middle name in the class. Would that be too weird though given that our kid would be only 1/4 Chinese?
And in case you were wondering, here’s a list of possible Chinese middle names:
I think that’d be great! Totally not weird, and I bet they’d probably grow up appreciating the tie to their/ your/ your mother’s heritage.
I really like Mingxia for a girl. I used to dive so I think of Fu Mingxia, and Wu Mingxia
For a boy, Yanlin gets my vote. I like the meaning of that one!
I don’t see anything wrong with it. I think its a nice idea seeing that you have Chinese heritage. There are actually a lot of cute and pretty Chinese names that would be easy to use in an English speaking country. From this list, I like these ideas as mns:
There were several Chinese kids in my secondary school with an English first name and a Chinese middle name, which they went by at Chinese School and some of them at home where their home language wasn’t English. I think it’s a lovely idea to honour your heritage and I don’t think them being 1/4 Chinese will be a problem, especially if you plan for them to learn Chinese as well.
It’s a wonderful idea. I’ve considered the same but my kids would only be 1/8 Chinese - it might be too much of a stretch! I think it’s really great that you will be encouraging your kids to be proud of their heritage and also to learn the language, which will open so many doors for them.
Beautiful names and great idea. I think it’s so cool when people dig into their heritage and ancestry for names, it makes them that much more meaningful
Cool! We have the same task ahead of us…
My DH is of Chinese heritage (though born in Singapore). [name]Do[/name] you have any naming traditions that your extended family would expect you to follow (which could be used as guidelines)?
In my in-laws family, there is a 12 line family poem and each generation takes the first character of a line of the poem as the first character in their Chinese name… so all my DH’s cousins & brother’s kids have the same first character (which in English would be pronounced “E-”. It doesn’t add to the meaning of their name, but you know where they fit in the family. The next generation takes the first character of the next line etc. After 12 generations, they start at the beginning again. The other tradition is that the paternal grandfather chooses the grandchildren’s names. Although, my in-laws are not assigning a name to our kids (fortunately), but are providing a list that we can choose from -which is great for me, being the non-Chinese half of this family -cause I wouldn’t know where to start with picking a Chinese name!
Another Chinese friend of mine said that the tradition in their families is that all the siblings share one character in their name. So, for example, if you chose “mei” as the family character, all the children would be X-[name]Mei[/name] or [name]Mei[/name]-X.
Tying the family together with a shared character seems to be very important in the Chinese families I know. That, of course, makes picking names all the more challenging!
Oh -the other Chinese naming tradition I’ve learned recently is that you can NOT name a child after someone else. Apparently it’s insulting. My colleague’s daughter shares one character of her name with her uncle (her paternal grandfather named her and didn’t know her mother’s siblings names). So, when she returns home to [name]China[/name] to visit her family, none of her maternal grandparents or aunts & uncles use her name. They call her “baby”!
Unfortunately,I don’t know if there were any name traditions in my mom’s family. She never talked much about her culture. Right now my fiance’ really like Biyu and Mingyu, which works for the children having the same name. We plan on only having one for now, so if it’s a girl we’ll use Biyu and if it’s a boy we’ll use Mingyu. Lately he really like [name]Mei[/name] names, but I’m not too big of a fan of those since mei is used a lot.
