If I am confused by what name I should be calling myself in William's presence, chances are, he's equally confused by all the names I am calling him. He is "William," "Szu-Chuan," "Didi," "Baby," "Baobei," "Chuan-Chuan," and "Chuan-Geh."The last name, "Chuan-Geh" is the nickname the caretakers at St. Lucy's gave him. It's a combination of the latter part of his first name, Szu-Chuan, combined with a piece of "Geh-Geh" ("brother" in Mandarin Chinese). If you put it all together, "Chuan-Geh" amounts to something like "Little Brother Chuan."
The day we picked up William from St. Lucy's, two other families were also there to get their children. Their babies' nicknames seemed to follow a similar formula:
(latter half of the first name) + "Geh" (for boys) or "Mei" (for girls) = nickname
If you want to soup it up a bit more, try this alternate formula, applied to one of the children:
"Ah" + (latter half of the first name) + "Geh" (for boys) or "Mei" (for girls) = nickname
"Ah" is a sound that is sometimes appended when calling someone. In my lifetime, I've only heard it added at the end of someone's name, but I guess it must work both ways.
So following these equations, if Andrew had a St. Lucy's nickname, it would probably be "Drew-Geh" or "Ah-Drew-Geh." Using my Chinese name, mine would be "Li-Mei," or "Ah-Li-Mei." (It sounds better than "Dith-Mei" or "Ah-Dith-Mei," a variant of "Judith.")
How about yours?
1 comment:
This is interesting . . ..
I've only heard the addition of "geh" and "jeh" (for the girls) in being respectful to elders in the church. Kinda like "Bro. Ken" = "Ken Geh." And, I've heard it with both characters of given name.
I always considered it part of a "title" and that way it was going at the end. Just like "lee lao shr" for Teacher Lee.
I've never heard of the "mei" suffix before.
My college students often add "ah" to either character from a given name or to a totally unrelated nickname. (Hence the president's name "A-bien.")
Another common addition is "shiao" or "small" to the front of either a nickname or one character of the given name.
I've always thought it interesting that in English we add to the end of the name and in Chinese they add to the beginning of the name to make nicknames.
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