Monday, March 12, 2007

About Kay's name


This is what Kay's name will look like in Chinese - Lin Qi in Mandarin and Lam Kei in Cantonese. Lim is of course my surname and Kay means a kind of jade or outstanding; extraordinary; distinguished; admirable in Chinese.

Basically we started thinking about the name after we first moved to Toronto a few years back. As most of you will know, names are normally expressed as first name, last name in this part of the world. So a typical name like mine will be read as Chee Yuen Lim, with Yuen being normally ignored and Chee Lim is not exactly how i like to be called. I ended up combining Chee Yuen into a single word and of course Sien Ching has came up with something cooler like Sching. My name is still easy with friends but it gets a bit frustrating when I am speaking with strangers. So I have resorted to 'Nigel' when i am ordering pizzas or cabs, or anything that does not require me to be truthful.

Anyway, back to Kay - we decided to go with something simple to save her the frustrations of her parents, but more importantly, we like her name to somewhat link back to her Chinese name and voila Kay, as it sounds just like the Cantonese version. It will also make it easier for us to name her siblings(this is a BIG if) - eg Fay(next girl), Jay(boy), May, etc.

p/s:One more note for Singaporeans reading this, because of the
Hanyu Pinyin name on my passport, I have Chee, Yuen, Lin, Z, Lim on my drivers license here - result of the Canadian Immigration when I first landed in Toronto, they actually went out of space because they cannot squeeze Lin Zhiyuan into my official documents.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Very funny mate :-) I shall call you Nigel from now on! I had about 20 pronunciations / spellings with my surname by the Brits when I was in the UK, so I know what you mean. The only thing is Hayley can't exactly change her surname so she is stuck with it!

Anonymous said...

Excellent! Congratulations to both of you! After spending months locked in a room with you, Cheeyuen, I never thought I'd see the day. I'm not sure if I'm proud or heartbroken. Best wishes to all of you!

Anonymous said...

Well done Nigel!

ARTSEE said...

ALTHOUGH WE HAVE BORING NAMES WE ARE EXCITED FOR THE THREE OF YOU!

CONGRATULATIONS!

WE WISH YOU ALL LOTS OF LUCK AND LOVE!!!!

xoxo

BEV AND MICHELLE