name = characters (click on link to hear it spoken) = pinyin = Chinese restaurant meaning?
Kevin = 凱 文 = kai3 wen2 = gentleman?
Sarah = 莎 拉 = sha1 la4 = sweetheart?
So... this post is meant to ask our readers who know Mandarin to help us out. Did we figure out the pinyin correctly with the tone numbers? What do you think about these translations? I really don't understand how my characters that mean "a kind of sedge grass use anciently for raincoats" and "pull, drag; seize, hold; lengthen" can possibly translate into sweetheart... but what do I know?
Sorry... three posts in one day is a lot. We've just got lots of things to think about these days. Maybe my Chinese name should be "woman who blogs too much." Kevin says, "Maybe it is." We'll see.
Added 7/22/08 at 12:10pm: I'm learning now that our "Chinese names" were just transliterated names. They aren't meant to have meaning, but to sound like our names in English. Oh, and my name might mean salad! Oh well. There's worse things to be called than a salad!
Added 7/23/08 at 11:46am: Confirmed with another source, our names aren't meant to have meaning. And if you tried to make a meaning out of mine, I'm a grass salad. Oh well! There are worse things to have your transliterated Chinese name look like. My name could look like something like "rotten fish." Now that would be horrible.
Well, it really depends what kind of salad. Are you just a hum-drum garden variety? Or something a bit more adventurous like Nicoise? What kind of lettuce...iceberg? romaine? arugala? This really could go either way, I'm afraid.
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