介绍:
Xiaohua: Many netizens feel that more and more primary school students have very special names, like names containing 4 characters. Why do parents give such long names to their kids?
不少人在网上议论，学生们与众不同的名字越来越多了，比如姓名是4个字的学生越来越常见。为什么家长要给孩子起这样特殊的名字呢？
So have you seen those or have heard those names with four characters? And why is it that they are becoming more popular?
Heyang: I guess the number of characters in your child’s name is just another place for these people to use their creativity, to make their kid stand out just by reading out that name. For me, I’ve seen examples such as adding your mother’s surname after the father’s. And then giving this kid a given name is two words too. So an example would be 肖李馨怡. So, the father’s surname is Xiao, and the mother’s surname is Li, and you get a mouth full. I think this is working against all kids. When they are trying to learn how to write their names in primary school, isn’t this extra burden extra obstacle for them to go through?
Mark: I think as long as they are well-known characters; it’s not so much of a problem. I mean there’s this other colleague of ours who had an unusual character. Whenever I went on a trip somewhere around China with him (on a reporting trip), we check in at the airport and then he would have to go to another service desk to sort out his unusual character. Because the check-in people could not process his character. He said my parents wanted me to have a unique name, but it caused me so much hassle at airports. They wish to deal with me separately because of the character of my name. So I think having four normal characters or commonplace characters is not such a big deal as having an extraordinary character.
Xiaohua: It can be a big deal, depending on what you are talking about. If these students all sit in a test, and the person with a four-character name has to spend one more minute writing his or her name than the other people. What about that?
Mark: And they need a wider passport, too, wouldn’t they? To fit all the name on it. But do you know, if you go to a country like Spain, for example, with some of the people having incredibly long names, all the family names going back generations get added on the end.
Xiaohua: Really? Can you give us an example?
Mark: I cannot give you an example, because the name is too long to memorize. I mean really long, at least the same with Arabic names. You get some very very long Arabic names. But this is all sorted out, because no one uses that name every day. They just use the first part of the name, don’t they? So it’s not necessarily a big deal. Four-character is not that long. I mean if you look at some Western names, for example, in terms of syllables, they have far more syllables than a four-character Chinese name.
Heyang: I think it’s actually a big deal, especially when you’re talking about, you know, most of your peers in a classroom would be writing a two-character or three-character name, and you’re writing a four-character name. That means extra time. Whenever you are doing an examination or whatever.
And also another point I wanna make is you can never underestimate the determination of Chinese parents to want to make their kid’s name standout. Meaning, because, with one pronunciation of a word in ,Chinese, there are millions of ways for you to choose that character. And the parents will always choose the most difficult one, the most obscure one, just to make themselves maybe look as if they have a lot of knowledge or something. And then, that is so much trouble.
Like my good friend, her given name is Chen Xi. And the 曦 is so difficult to write. That’s only three characters and it’s already really troublesome for her.
Mark: You’ll find it in some English names like Catherine Johns. That would be a really ordinary commonplace name. But if you put a strange name like Zeta in the middle, you get Catherine Zeta-Jones. And everyone remembers that name. I think actually in her case it’s some old family name. But it certainly makes the name standout.
Xiaohua: I see. But Koey agrees with Heyang saying “Cause everyone wants their parents (child) to be the unique one in the world, but in my view actually we are all ordinary people. We were given birth by our parents, we go to school, work and get married. So there’s no need to have a unique name. All we need to do is be ourselves and that’s the real meaning of life.” And I think that’s very well said.
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