Tag: How did the Name Come About? Ashlyn Haley
OK, Viv, this is for you. I think I have been delaying this long enough, and now it’s time to answer your TAG.
Ashlyn. How did it come about? We started to brainstorm for names as soon as we found out it’s a girl, thinking, must be easy, girls name, piece of cake. There are many pretty girl names alright, but Baba and I couldn’t compromise. My all time favorite was Audrey, but it will not work for a Chinese family with elderly who don’t really speak English. Pronunciation will turn into “All Jue”, which is close to Cantonese pronunciation of peeing. No, N-O W-A-Y !
Friends had been asking “have a name yet?” through out my pregnancy. Baba and I finally narrowed down to 2, his favorite (Ashley) and my favorite (Jocelyn). It was like a light bulk just popped on top of my head when my friend Joan said “why don’t you combine the 2?” Joceley? Acelyn? Joley? ASHLYN it is! Johnson wasn’t sure about this idea when I first suggested to him. The more I say it, the better I felt about it, and I finally convinced Johnson to name our girl ASHLYN.
We will go to the middle name later. Now, let’s talk about the Chinese name. As soon as I found out I was pregnant, we asked Father In Law (FIL) for name idea. I knew that his family uses a particular character in their name for each generation, and that was set by their ancestors. So, I asked FIL what’s that character and ask him to name the first born grandchild in the family. Days, weeks, months passed, nothing. We saw them every week, but we casually brought up the subject every other week to remind him about the name idea. I asked my dad for idea, he told me it should leave it up to my FIL, so OK, continue waiting. We will come back to it later.
As for her middle name, Haley, one of my favorite too. Elaine and I were instant messaging each other, I was telling her I really like Haley as middle name, but also want the middle name to sound like the Chinese name. You know, how we used our Chinese name and turned it into English pronunciation and used it as our middle names. No, I don’t want that. I wanted an American name as her middle name. So, back to the instant message. As I was saying, I like the name Haley, so Elaine said “Why don’t you just use Haley and turn it into Chinese?” I thought about it, good idea. Discussed it with Johnson as soon as I got home from work. He basically OK’d the idea and of course we needed to run it by the in laws. Luckily, FIL OK’d our name selection, and the next step was to choose the characters.
Haley, the Chinese name we’ve choose pronounced Hay Yee, close enough, I think. I wanted to use the character with positive meaning. For the first character “Hay”, there were 2 of them in mind. 1. Hope and 2. Sunlight. I prefer #2 cux not many people used that one, and why? probably because it’s a character with many strokes. Then I paused, no, can’t use that one cux Johnson probably don’t know how to write that. So I suggested Hope 希 for the first character. For 2nd character “Yee”, I had my mind set on the one means Happy, Cheerful 怡. At dinner table, we presented the Chinese name to the family, Sister in law said “don’t use this Hay, cux it looks like a scissor on top cutting the fabrics below. Why don’t you use the Sunlight Hay?” I told her the concern I had, but after all, everyone agreed we should use the sunlight Hay 曦.
So, there you have it, Ashlyn Haley 曦怡
曦 = sunlight
怡 = happy, cheerful, joyful, harmony
怡 = happy, cheerful, joyful, harmony
A side note, as soon as I announced the Chinese name to friends and families, the first reaction was “WOW, this Hay? Good thing she doesn’t study in Asia. If she is, and need to write her name, or penalized by teachers to write her name many times, she will hate you for it”
Stay tuned for Part 2 of Tag: How did the name come about?
~Ta Ta ~
