interdependent

i recently experienced and heard a few comments that inspired me to write up a post on names. just thinking about the various names already cracked me up.

now, there are different types of names or nicknames that are pretty funny.

the first type are those who are just called ah boy, ah girl or meimei, simply because of their gender or seniority in the family. i saw so many of such examples when swarms of my relatives came to visit over the weekend. when they introduced themselves to my gramps, many of them just said “ah gong, i am ah boy” or “ah gong, i am mei mei” (this was  for my youngest sister who is only called mei mei in my family simply because her real english name was too long for the older folks to remember/pronounce. and this was despite that fact that tons of my cousins were younger than her). in families where there are more than one boy, they simply called themselves 大boy and 小boy. my gramps must have heard so many people claiming to be ah boys, 大boys and 小boys to totally not remember who they actually were. just when i thought this phenomenon was restricted to only nicknames, i was proven so wrong when my eldest uncle and eldest aunt’s names were “ah di” and “ah mei” respectively.  for the absolutely  uncultured, that obviously translates to ah boy and ah girl.

another type is when nicknames are formed by absurd distortions of their formal name. im one such example. thanks to the elderly folks in my household again, i am not called michelle in my family. as a matter of fact, im sure no one will know who the hell you’re talking about if you pronounced my name the proper way. no no. im affectionately called mee-xiao. hell knows how that happened and im still pretty uncomfortable if i had to address myself with that name. but it’s still hilarious to see how people reacted to it. other examples of such distortion are the unfortunate other-halves of my cousin and mine. ive absolutely no idea what my cousin’s girlfriend’s real name is, but i do know that she’s called “orh-nee” (yes, it’s that oily yam paste dessert). hey, maybe it’s her high-caloric nature that attracted my cousin to her. HAHA. okie. mean joke. on the other hand, my poor boyfriend is hilariously called 酒鬼 in my family. of course they’re always nice and courteously and calling him qiugui before him. but man, i never knew that my family could come up with so many alcoholic related jokes till i met him. but then, in my auntie’s word, such nicknames made this two “outsiders” feel more friendly and relatable.

one last type (of the countless types) are names that run in the family. it’s like primus, secundus, tertius, quartus, quintus, sextus and septimus in stardust. or jennifer, julianne and jessica in julz’s family. it’s as if you immediately knew they were from the family just by looking at their names. of course, you prob wont figure out that me, jo and evan are of the same family purely by looking at our english names. you might not even notice if you saw us in real life since one is sooo fat, the other is sooo skinny and the last is sooo averagely sized (no. im not the fat one, jo is not the skinny one. and evan is not the average sized one). but look at our chinese name and you’ll realize. we all start with 思. my dad is his siblings name starts with 承 while my mum’s side starts with 慕. i think the chinese version of naming your kids with the same word seems so much cooler. though i hafta admit the stardust version of naming kids is pretty awesome too. but it shouldnt be translated into chinese cos they’ll probably just be called 老大, 老二, 老三, 老四, 老五, 老六, 老幺.

and thus i conclude my random entry at 1.06am. im just crazy. i need sleep.