Beauty And The Bees

Each time Mia has to write down her full name, she'd take a little longer than me. My full name is just Cornelius Koh and that's it—I don't have any other Chinese name apart from my surname. But Mia has a Chinese name, so she has to write Euphemia Thien Tshung Tsui.

When Jamie was born, Mia and I decided to do without a Chinese name for her. Instead, we gave her a middle name, Jasmine. So when she grows up, she'd have to write Jamie Jasmine Koh.

I don't quite understand the policy of her schoool, St James. According to her teacher, all Chinese kids must have Chinese names. We told her that our JJ hasn't any, but she kept insisting. So to make her happy, Mia told her to just write something that sounds like Jamie in Chinese. This instruction was given over the phone. Both Mia and I did not go to Chinese school when we were young, so we don't know much about Chinese characters, let alone the specific meanings etc. I dare say I know a bit more than Mia—at least I know "dong" (east), "nan" (south), "xi" (west) , "bei" (north) and "zhong" (middle), because I see those characters all the time when I play mahjong.

So anyway, when JJ came home from her first day at school, we were intrigued to find that the teacher had written her Chinese name on her book, but without her surname. Apparently her teacher did not know the correct character for my "Koh". Later on, I added the "Koh" to Jamie's given name.

For two weeks plus now, JJ has been practising writing her Chinese name almost daily; until it suddenly occured to me to ask some of my Chinese staff if they knew what's the meaning of those Chinese characters. Well, according the them, those characters read: Xu Jia Mi. The "Xu" is my surname in Chinese (as in Xuduo de Xu). Then "Jia" means "good; fine; beautiful". But "Mi" means bee (as in Mifeng de Mi). According to my staff, it's not quite appropriate to use the "Mi" of the bee for people because in the character itself there is a "worm" at the bottom.

Oh for heaven's sake!; a name is a name—if it sounds like Jamie, does it really matter how it's written? I didn't think it should matter. But when I told Mia about it, she became quite upset. She's all stressed up about the "worm" thing. She went on and on about that worm this evening—thank goodness she's gone to bed now. But knowing her, I know she'll be harping on that forsaken worm in the days to come.

So I've come up with Plan B—I'll be asking my staff to teach me how to write "Mei" (as in Meili de Mei), meaning beautiful. I told Mia about this Plan B just before she went to bed. She seemed quite pleased with it. Women!

Two weeks in primary one so far; only about 6 years to go before I relocate her to an English medium school. I am confident that JJ will survive that 6 years, but I'm not so sure that Mia and I will. But at least JJ will have a beautiful name.