Linzhi Mei Zi-Xiu Leiker

 

Lin(2)	Zhi(4)	Mei	Zi	Xiu
Meaning: spiritual, wonderful, mysterious, clever, excellent	Meaning: fine, delicate; appropriate; careful, irreproachable	Meaning: Beautiful	Meaning: Purple Flower	Meaning: Pretty

Description
In China, there are no common names like "John" or "Mary". Each name is uniquely created both in sound and character representation by the parents. I wanted an authentic name that Linzhi could proudly use in the Chinese community. However, selecting an appropriate name is a very difficult task for people who are not fluent in Chinese. Mark and I would like to thank Yuh-Juan Hung and Kuo-in Chen for their help in constructing the Chinese character representation of Linzhi's name.

Chinese is a tonal language. Different tones attached to the same sound elements have different meaning. Tones are represented by either numbers as shown above or by strokes above the lettering. To represent Chinese sounds using English alphabetical characters, a system called Romanization is used. Yale Romanization is used for the Cantonese dialect, Pinyin Romanization is used for the Mandarin dialect. Linzhi's name is based upon the Mandarin dialect.

Linzhi's name has many strokes. There is a joke that children curse parents who give them a name with many strokes. Children say that on examinations, they barely finish writing their name before time is up. Luckily for Linzhi, her education will be in English, so Mark and I don't have to worry about giving her a complex, beautiful name.