nom chinois

For seven years living in China I've managed to get away with not having a Chinese name. I never saw why I'd need one. Still don't. But some Chinese people seem to think it a necessity for us laowai to have a Chinese name. I'm quite happy for Chinese people to mangle the pronunciation of my English name. Anyway, having only once heard my father in law say my name, I realised that maybe a Chinese name would be useful. So I consulted my wife. But I had certain rules about a Chinese name:
1: No dorky foreigners' Chinese names. I mean, 大山 is simply ridiculous. What would you think of a Chinese person introducing himself to you, saying "My English name is Big Mountain." No offence intended to Mr Rowswell himself, I just find this kind of Chinese name to be stupid and absurd.
2: No ripping off famous people's names. Some foreigners do this. I met one guy who stole Lu Xun's real name (which I can't remember). I once had a student who said, "My English name is Jackie Chan." I said, "Let's just stick with Jackie. You can't go stealing somebody else's name, that ain't right."
3: It has to look like a real Chinese name, so that nobody reading it without any prior knowledge of me will say, "Hey, look at this dumbarse laowai's stupid Chinese name! What an idiot!"

Anyway, the process went like this: Many Chinese people see my surname and say "Wang!", so 王 is the obvious choice for surname, although 吴,武, and similar characters could also be used, their pronunciation being closer to my real surname. In the end, though, we stuck with 王. That left a given name: It needed to be something good, suited to me, and generally suitable for use as a name. lzh's suggestion was 博, as in 博士, because she's convinced I know everything and really should just hurry up and get myself a PhD. At first I wasn't so sure. It sounds similar (but a different tone) to my old Chinese teacher's name. We tried a few others, but nothing really stuck. Anyway, her preference was definitely for 王博.

Well, then yesterday when I was setting up this blog, I needed a name for it to go in the address. Canalblog informed me that my chosen name was taken (because I used it for a blog I have since deleted?), and I needed to come up with a different one in a hurry. I briefly thought of "Wang Long" in reference to the character "Tang Long" in the Bruce Lee movie (the one set in Rome where he fights Chuck Norris... Damn, what's it called?), but that's just silly, so I went with 王博, or at least, wangbo.

There you go, thanks to the internet, my Chinese name problem was solved.

I've since discovered there was a poet in the early Tang Dynasty called 王勃, so I guess I'm cutting it a little close to the "No ripping off famous people's names" rule, but I only learnt that today, so too late now.

Right, I'll get into the study later this afternoon or this evening. I'm running short of notebook space, and lzh forbade me from going out and buying more. Apparently we have some more hidden here somewhere. Which means that actual studying Chinese posts will appear this evening or tomorrow morning.