What's in a name?

By Wu Chen (China Daily)
Updated: 2009-06-04 10:05

Names matter for the Chinese. Generally speaking, a Chinese name should sound good, and carry certain auspicious connotations for it is believed a baby's name is intimately linked to his or her destiny.

Yao Xue and her husband Wang Xiao, university graduates in their late twenties, had a baby girl last October. Once the initial excitement died down, the No 1 priority for whole family, including the four grandparents, was giving the baby her name.

Preliminary discussions, drawing on the knowledge of the six adults, ended without agreement.

Yao then recalled testing her name on a numerology website that said her name was problematic based on the calculation of her Ba Zi, or "eight characters", derived from the time, date, month and year of birth.

"You will face a lot of difficulties in mid-life; you will quarrel often with your husband; you will not be happy in your old age ..." read the online prediction.

According to the Book of Change, or I Ching, which describes the system of cosmology and philosophy that is intrinsic to ancient Chinese beliefs, the Ba Zi are grouped in four pairs and each pair is represented by one Heavenly Stem and one Earth Branch - ancient measurements of time.

Each character has its associated polarity - yin and yang - and the five elements - gold, wood, water, fire and earth.

Yao does not want her daughter to test her name on a numerology website someday, only to find that something is wrong.

So she approached a friend's father, an amateur I Ching enthusiast.

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