Names

The name given to our daughter by the social welfare institute is Tong Min Mao.

All the children from one orphanage have the same surname, in this case Tong, for the city they are in. In this case the town is Tonggu, and Tong means “copper” because the area is rich in copper mines. All the children from this orphanage also share a generational name of “Min” (which means “of the people”), then a given name, in this case Mao. Because Chinese is a mulit-tonal language we had to wait until we saw the character of her name to know the meaning, as there can be many meanings of Mao. Turns out the meaning of our Mao is “furry” or more commonly, “fluffy”, which in Chinese is a commonly used term for “cute”. So, our daughter’s orphanage name could mean “people (or person) of the fur” (!), which fits us well with our two very hairy dogs and rather furry house. The character Min, “of the People”, or “The People’s” is the same character as in “The People’s Republic of China”, 民. The character for Mao is the same character as in Chairman Mao, though in his case it is a sur-name; 毛. So another interpretation of her name is that the orphanage director is very patriotic!

Her new name will be Isabella Youlan Minmao Emery Webster.

Isabella Webster was Andrea's Great Grandmother. She was born on the 4th of July and lived to 101 years old--so it is a very auspiscious name in our family!
Youlan means mountain orchid, or secluded orchid, and is written 幽蘭. Youlan is also the name of a Chinese song that is by far the world's oldest surviving substantial melody, dating from at least the 6th century CE. At the risk of a rather long name, we decided to keep her orphanage name of Minmao too. If she ever wants it legally tied to her as part of her past then it is there for her to use.

(The Chinese characters in the above posting may not show on all browsers. If you are finding funny characters or question marks, they are really supposed to be Chinese characters.)