Name Change : 曾琬玲

Speaking of Shanghai and China, I got the writing of my name changed a couple days ago. The numerology of its strokes and the meanings were supposed to be much better suited to my personality and my fortune. Apparently, the previous one indicated that I would have a lot of falls, a lot of accidents. Another coincidence? It has been happening very frequently ever since I've been able to walk; I'd always slip and fall on the bathroom floor, in the fields, at school, across the street, down the stairs, up the stairs, on sidewalks, in shopping centres, off beds - everything I could possibly fall from. There were also other things that were very accurate, but I won't go into details, partly because I can't remember. I think there was also some mention about being difficult and/or OCD. True.

Another important factor that made my mom start all of this searching was the fact that the second character of my name isn't found on computers. None all over the world. It was pretty much the same one I have now, except with a 'water prefix' instead of the 'jade' one. It wasn't a common word, because it was the name of what turned out to be a very small river and my mom hadn't known that it was so small, which is probably why I can't type it for you. It's the left side of 滴, the three strokes, with 宛 on the right side. The word 滴 is pronounced dī and means a drop of or to drip water, that's why it has water as its prefix. The other character can be a surname or mean similar or winding in some contexts and is pronounced wǎn, the same as the characters of both my previous and current name. Yes, with a 'stone prefix' , like so 碗, it would mean a bowl.

My Chinese name hasn't been used in any formal documents, so there's nothing that I would have to change, which is very convenient. Most people write it incorrectly or don't know that the second character exists at all. They usually assume that it's the one with the 'girl prefix' 婉 which, according to this online dictionary, means graceful or tactful and, of course, like almost all of the Chinese characters can be used in a variety of contexts. The last character has also been changed, but I'm too tired to explain it, as it's fairly complicated. And now I can type it, so here it is:

曾 :: zheng - a surname and can be used in a number of contexts
琬 :: wǎn - ensign of royalty
玲 :: líng - tinkling of gem-pendants, (used in compounds)

Together they add up to 35 strokes, which is supposed to be much better than the 37 strokes it had been previously. For the last character, it can also be used in conjunction with another character in the following example:

玲瓏 :: líng lóng - (adj) exquisite; detailed; (adj) clever; quick (of a woman)

Interesting, isn't it? :]