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Help[Facts] Re: name meaning, i need help please!
in reply to a message by raindancing
Well, if I could invent it, so could her parents, I suppose, or whoever it was that named her.
I'm always amazed at people giving a name first and searching for its meaning afterwards ... sometimes years afterwards. If you're interested in meanings in the first place, or even mildly aware of how languages work, wouldn't you be reluctant to choose a set of sounds that are already used for drain cleaner, a bluegrass band or, ahem!, an intimate body function?
Once I taught a Chinese boy who needed an English name when his family changed countries. His brother was Chou, so he became Joe ... but my guy paged through the dictionary pretty well at random, found the word Fen and liked it. So Fen became his English name ... which everyone assumed was a Chinese name ... and I was always relieved that his quest for a single-syllable English word hadn't taken him further down the letter F!
I'm always amazed at people giving a name first and searching for its meaning afterwards ... sometimes years afterwards. If you're interested in meanings in the first place, or even mildly aware of how languages work, wouldn't you be reluctant to choose a set of sounds that are already used for drain cleaner, a bluegrass band or, ahem!, an intimate body function?
Once I taught a Chinese boy who needed an English name when his family changed countries. His brother was Chou, so he became Joe ... but my guy paged through the dictionary pretty well at random, found the word Fen and liked it. So Fen became his English name ... which everyone assumed was a Chinese name ... and I was always relieved that his quest for a single-syllable English word hadn't taken him further down the letter F!
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