When naming my 2 children, we have different exprience with both of them.
For Ian, we had the Chinese name first, and only got him the Christian name much later.
For Isabel, it was the reverse. We gave her Christian name first, and only decided her Chinese name just few days before she was born.
Ian’s Christian name was given by his uncle (DH’s brother), coz very similar to his Chinese name Yee Hern. I accepted it, as ‘Ian’ sounds cool.
When naming Isabel, I did check from a few baby naming sites like BabyCentre, and fell in love with this one.
For both children’s Chinese names, I didn’t go to those sensei like Loh Tit Bat (罗铁笔), and I didn’t check in those fortune telling books too. What I did was simply go through the dictionary.
I don’t really believe in those sensei. I have a story to share. My mom’s friend visited once, to get opinion on her proposed baby name. The sensei told her to change the middle name from AAA to BBB. She kept quiet. Few weeks later, she revisited. The sensei couldn’t recognize her. She showed her baby name again, with the middle name as BBB. This time, the sensei told her to change the middle name from BBB to AAA.
Do you see the point? The sensei purposely make some changes to show they did some work!
Anyway, as I use the web a lot, I used to wish they can have a very good Chinese baby naming tool online. There are some now, but not good - or I should say very lousy! It was really tough for me to name Isabel.
For Muslims in our country, you can now check your Baby Names online. I’ve tried checking Isabel’s name on this site. I remember the Malay singer group Search used to be very famous with their song ‘Isabella’. But I couldn’t find this name in the site, maybe Isabella is not a Muslim name? I think this site contains more conventional names like Fatimah, Ahmed, etc. - an area for improvement (??), coz I have many Malay friends who name their children modernly like Ellisa, Nancy, etc.
When naming my 2 children, we have different exprience with both of them.
For Ian, we had the Chinese name first, and only got him the Christian name much later.
For Isabel, it was the reverse. We gave her Christian name first, and only decided her Chinese name just few days before she was born.
Ian’s Christian name was given by his uncle (DH’s brother), coz very similar to his Chinese name Yee Hern. I accepted it, as ‘Ian’ sounds cool.
When naming Isabel, I did check from a few baby naming sites like BabyCentre, and fell in love with this one.
For both children’s Chinese names, I didn’t go to those sensei like Loh Tit Bat (罗铁笔), and I didn’t check in those fortune telling books too. What I did was simply go through the dictionary.
I don’t really believe in those sensei. I have a story to share. My mom’s friend visited once, to get opinion on her proposed baby name. The sensei told her to change the middle name from AAA to BBB. She kept quiet. Few weeks later, she revisited. The sensei couldn’t recognize her. She showed her baby name again, with the middle name as BBB. This time, the sensei told her to change the middle name from BBB to AAA.
Do you see the point? The sensei purposely make some changes to show they did some work!
Anyway, as I use the web a lot, I used to wish they can have a very good Chinese baby naming tool online. There are some now, but not good - or I should say very lousy! It was really tough for me to name Isabel.
For Muslims in our country, you can now check your Baby Names online. I’ve tried checking Isabel’s name on this site. I remember the Malay singer group Search used to be very famous with their song ‘Isabella’. But I couldn’t find this name in the site, maybe Isabella is not a Muslim name? I think this site contains more conventional names like Fatimah, Ahmed, etc. - an area for improvement (??), coz I have many Malay friends who name their children modernly like Ellisa, Nancy, etc.