What's your name?

Pre-story: Ah Kie wrote a lovely piece welcoming me to the blogsphere. I’m really touched, that was sweet of him. Here it is.

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What exactly goes into a name? I believe our parents thought deeply into giving us names, thus stamping our identities for the rest of our lives. My name is a combination of my parents’ names, the first syllable from my dad’s name and the other two syllables from my mum’s name. My name was decided way before I was born. I did ask what if I turned out to be of the opposite sex, they nonchalantly said, it’s alright, we’ll just change your middle name *horror*.

As I grew up, I didn’t quite like my name. It sounds very traditional, rare but still … traditional. I have only come across one person with my name, he was an old man, yes, you got that right, it was a guy. So I have a boy’s name! I did ask around “knowledgeable” people aka old folks if they knew the meaning behind my name. I must say, it is pretty… manly. As a whole it means Warrior of My Generation. Sounds really macho isn't it? But since I’m a girl, I will think of myself as Zena, Warrior Princess. Right. Considering my size.

So how did this name thing came about? Keropok had a friend, Ah Der over and his mum couldn’t quite catch her name. So the mum asked if she could give Ah Der an English name. Ah Der didn’t mind, if it means Keropok’s mum can remember her better, no harm done.

Thus began the discussion of a new name. It started out with Christine (origin: English, meaning: Follower of Christ) which resulted in the choosing of spellings, is it going to be Christine, or Kristine. The other options were:

a) Elizabeth (origin: Hebrew, meaning: God is my oath) apparently reminds the mum of
someone slutty back in her days.
b) Claire (origin: French, meaning: clear, bright) sounds like chocolates.
c) Sophie (origin: French, meaning: wisdom) was sweet.

And so it was settled, she will be known as Sophie….Or so Ah Der thought, until the mum said “Goodbye Christine” when she left. So yeah, looks like Ah Der’s new name is Christine. She’s still getting a hang of her name.

I think it is cute and really funny. From a one syllable name, Ah Der is now Christine. Wait, now we can call her Chris for short. And since Chris is also a boy’s name, I have a friend. Hehe…