Names

I like to think that my chinese name means precious. To begin with,
i am increasing proud of the fact that i'm Asian,(something not always so during younger adolescent days) and having a name such as Lee Bi Ling reflects not only personality but novelty as well. Ok I digress. 'Bi', literally means lush, green.(its the same 'bi' for the bishan housing estate in Singapore). Often, it is used to describe jade, which is intrinsically valuable in terms of cost and "luck factor". In the context of a name, it would take into consideration the possible connotative words or meanings used to describe the verbs. From the example above, jade connotes the meaning of precious(do you see where i'm getting at).

So with that as an example, anyone who holds a chinese name can B.S and extrapolate upon possible meanings to his/her name.

This is however not the main point of this article. My primary concern is
the ubiquity of people in Asia being called by their Christian(or self-invented names). People do this for several reasons including jumping onto the trend bandwagon. A bloke i knew named Kiat wanted his name to be Winston so that he could date more girls. Alright, so maybe Kiat didn't sound that good phonetically. But I find it disconcerting when people with pretty chinese names choose to hide their asian labels and replace it with what i call mundane and secular english sounding names. In my opinion, May Ting or Han Quan sounds richer in character than Jessie or Robert(not to mention more novel as well these days). People assume that having an english name facilitates their career and popularity, which is true to a marginal extent for the former case since chinese names do not exactly trigger easy memory recall and rememberance in a person whom one is meeting for the first time.
But for the latter belief, i can only hope for the reverse in future. Since more people are gonna give foreign-imported english names to their children or for themselves, people with only chinese names are going to be a rarity.

Speaking of rarity, some individuals have resorted to substituting verbs for
proper names. I have encountered people with first names such as Ghost, Hammer and Violin. I infer that it may be probable that these individuals desire to live up to the figurative meaning of such names in their personality, since have not the circumstance of asking them why. But coming back to the main jist, I have asked people why they did prefer conventional english names over their original chinese ones. The most reoccuring reason was that one would sound "nicer", more cosmopolitan(So what? more parochial without one). I am at times infuriated when some actually tell me or imply that a english name is culturally more superior than a chinese one. None so far had the audacity to say that of character .

From my own observations and perception, I came to the conclusion that a chinese name and not by adopting an english one can serve to intangibly enhance a person's greatness, market value or novelty. They sound really good too. A few prominent examples internationally include cellist Yo-Yo Ma and actress Gong Li. At home, i find one of the most beautical chinese names Ho Ching in a position of power at temasek holdings(the government's investment arm) and wife of the current DPM and "prime minister in waiting". It would be notable to include her father-in-law, the quintessential Lee Kuan Yew(he was formerly Harry Lee and favoured an Asian gravitate).

Sadly, my views find rare commonality with others. I often attempt to make such contentions only to receive comments listed above.