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Tag: How did the name come about? Alex Haylen

Here is the 2nd part of the TAG (the final part). This one will be shorter.

This time, we gonna start with his Chinese name, cux it will be very simple and short. One Sunday morning when I was still carrying Ashlyn (after we have decided on Ashlyn's Chinese name), when I woke up, a boy's Chinese name popped up in my head, out of no where--Hay Leun--曦麟. I immediately told Johnson about it and presented to the in laws. The question was which character we should use? For some reason, the one with most most strokes stuck in my mind. The meaning of this character is large male deer. Needless to say, everyone's reaction was "WOW, so many strokes, your son will hate you, more so than Ashlyn! Don't even think about sending him to Chinese school."

We didn't settle on the Chinese name yet. Remember, my rule for Chinese name and middle name? So I searched online, found Halen, and FYI, it is an unisex name. Good, sounded close enough, but I modified the spelling a little by adding "y" to make it HAYLEN, to ensure people won't pronouce the name as HELEN. Now, we settled on the Chinese name and middle name for our son.

With the first name selection, we had a difficult time. I thought, Ashlyn's initial is AHH, maybe the 2nd baby should have initial OHH and EHH, and it just happened 2 of my favorite names begin with O and E were Oscar and Ethan. Banned by Johnson, he didn't like either of them. Back to square 1. He liked Alex all along, he tried to convience me. I told him if we couldn't pick one that both of us agree on, we would use Alex. Silly me, he could've said no to any names until I give up and give in and agree on Alex. I couldn't come up with another name period, so I tried to convience myself by saying the full name over and over again to myself. Surprising, not bad. I liked it.

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Tag: How did the name come about? Ashlyn Haley

OK, Viv, this is for you. I think I have been delaying this long enough, and now it's time to answer your TAG.

Ashlyn. How did it come about? We started to brainstorm for names as soon as we found out it's a girl, thinking, must be easy, girls name, piece of cake. There are many pretty girl names alright, but Baba and I couldn't compromise. My all time favorite was Audrey, but it will not work for a Chinese family with elderly who don't really speak English. Pronunciation will turn into "All Jue", which is close to Cantonese pronunciation of peeing. No, N-O W-A-Y !

Friends had been asking "have a name yet?" through out my pregnancy. Baba and I finally narrowed down to 2, his favorite (Ashley) and my favorite (Jocelyn). It was like a light bulk just popped on top of my head when my friend Joan said "why don't you combine the 2?" Joceley? Acelyn? Joley? ASHLYN it is! Johnson wasn't sure about this idea when I first suggested to him. The more I say it, the better I felt about it, and I finally convinced Johnson to name our girl ASHLYN.

We will go to the middle name later. Now, let's talk about the Chinese name. As soon as I found out I was pregnant, we asked Father In Law (FIL) for name idea. I knew that his family uses a particular character in their name for each generation, and that was set by their ancestors. So, I asked FIL what's that character and ask him to name the first born grandchild in the family. Days, weeks, months passed, nothing. We saw them every week, but we casually brought up the subject every other week to remind him about the name idea. I asked my dad for idea, he told me it should leave it up to my FIL, so OK, continue waiting. We will come back to it later.

As for her middle name, Haley, one of my favorite too. Elaine and I were instant messaging each other, I was telling her I really like Haley as middle name, but also want the middle name to sound like the Chinese name. You know, how we used our Chinese name and turned it into English pronunciation and used it as our middle names. No, I don't want that. I wanted an American name as her middle name. So, back to the instant message. As I was saying, I like the name Haley, so Elaine said "Why don't you just use Haley and turn it into Chinese?" I thought about it, good idea. Discussed it with Johnson as soon as I got home from work. He basically OK'd the idea and of course we needed to run it by the in laws. Luckily, FIL OK'd our name selection, and the next step was to choose the characters.

Haley, the Chinese name we've choose pronounced Hay Yee, close enough, I think. I wanted to use the character with positive meaning. For the first character "Hay", there were 2 of them in mind. 1. Hope and 2. Sunlight. I prefer #2 cux not many people used that one, and why? probably because it's a character with many strokes. Then I paused, no, can't use that one cux Johnson probably don't know how to write that. So I suggested Hope 希 for the first character. For 2nd character "Yee", I had my mind set on the one means Happy, Cheerful 怡. At dinner table, we presented the Chinese name to the family, Sister in law said "don't use this Hay, cux it looks like a scissor on top cutting the fabrics below. Why don't you use the Sunlight Hay?" I told her the concern I had, but after all, everyone agreed we should use the sunlight Hay 曦.

So, there you have it, Ashlyn Haley 曦怡

曦 = sunlight
怡 = happy, cheerful, joyful, harmony

A side note, as soon as I announced the Chinese name to friends and families, the first reaction was "WOW, this Hay? Good thing she doesn't study in Asia. If she is, and need to write her name, or penalized by teachers to write her name many times, she will hate you for it"

Stay tuned for Part 2 of Tag: How did the name come about?

~Ta Ta ~

He's Here!

A dear friend of mine, Elaine, just gave birth to a healthy baby boy late last night.

Congratulations!!

Memorial Day Weekend

It was a long weekend, a 3-day weekend, but it seemed too short. Thought we could chill at home and relax, but no, activities lined up.

The highlights for the kids must be their 1st experience to the aquarium. We went to the Aquarium of the Bay at the Pier 39 in San Francisco. The weather was surpringly nice. Sunny and clear sky, just a little bit too much wind. Well, I guess it comes with the package since we're at the pier by the sea. My coworker strongly recommended the Monterey Aquarium, but due to other activities/committments, we decided to go to the one in SF instead. To me, I was a bit disappointed, but for the kids, they were thrilled.

When we entered the aquarium, before we went downstair to the "tunnels", there're several tanks of fish. Ashlyn and Alex were so excited, going from one tank to another. If I didn't urge them to proceed, we could probably spend another 30 minutes there.

As soon as we walked out the elevator, there's the first tunnel, where it similate the ocean closer to the shore. Every visitor was excited and everybody was just standing at the front end of the tunnel. Woo's and Ahh's. It took us a good 5 - 10 minutes to go through the first tunnel, not that there're much to watch, it's just stopping and waiting and trying to get the stroller to pass through.

The second tunnel similate the deeper ocean. There're sharks and rays. Needless to say, the rascals were estitic. Alex kept on tabbing the glasses, thinking he could touch the fish. Ashlyn just running up and down the tunnel and amazed by the fish all over and around her.

We finished the 2nd tunnel and started from tunnel #1 again cux Ashlyn wanted to see the fish again. She wanted to see the 3rd time, possible the 4th, or more, but I told her we would go look at something else.

So, we went back upstairs to the "Touch of the Bay" where you can touch the rays, baby sharks and star fish. Ashlyn was scare to touch, but Alex was so excited and rolled up his sleeves just like his daddy and ready for it. At the end, Alex touched the trepang/sea cucumber (海參), and yelled out "I touched it!"

Then we went to watch the seals by the pier. They smell and noisy, but the kids loved to watch them.

As we were leaving the dock, Alex was so tired and he fell asleep instantly as we put him in the stroller. Poor kid, he was so tired that he didn't even want to have his formula. As for Ashlyn, she was still too excited and hoping we were going to take her to another aquarium.