How did you choose your child's name?

My cute little bubsy has grown up so fast - he is turning one in 2 weeks' time!!! How time flies.

Bub is my little man. He may only be 11.5 months old, but he already knows how to talk back! He even gives extremely long "speeches" when he is told to sleep (he hates bedtimes). I still remember the days when all I had to do was rocked him gently and he would doze off quickly. Now, when I rock him, he thinks I'm playing with him and he would laugh and scream hysterically. It is his way of telling me to "rock faster! rock faster!!!!" What a naughty little wombat.

Bub has been to Singapore several times, but he has never been to Korea. We've planned a long time before to take him to Korea, back to his great-great-grandfather's town in Ulsan (울산). However, we never had the time because of work. Hussy's mum visited Perth twice from Korea, but his dad has never visited or seen bub yet since his birth as he was busy with work (he is a surgeon in Korea and is always always busy).

                                              That's my father-in-law on the right

MIL with bub in Perth

They will be coming to Singapore in 2 weeks' time for bub's birthday celebration. However, we'd like to make bub's first birthday memorable by taking him back to his ancestors' town and also celebrate his birthday with the Korean relatives in Seoul. I'm still not sure how we're going to celebrate it in Korea yet. Maybe we'll just hold a simple party at home like what they did for the twins' birthdays 2 years ago.




Personally, I can't wait to go to Korea because we've been planning since like FOREVER to take our wedding photos in the traditional Korean wedding costume. Hussy's sister did it for her wedding, and I've always wanted to do a Korean-style wedding photo too. However, we got married in Perth, and you can never find anything in Perth. We'll probably utilise the same photographer as the one my sister-in-law went to, as the pictures turned out quite good -

Hussy has only one older sister, and she has twins. The twins have never met bub before, so we had planned for months' (and hussy promised the twins) that we would all go to Lotte World together. The twins are 5 years-old now.

They wrote a very sweet message to bubsy recently. Bub is lucky to have two 누나s (older sister). Their names are Ji-Ah (지아) and Sun-Ah (선아).

Someone once asked me as to the origins of bub's Korean name, and what it meant. When bub was born, my MIL, who's an extremely devoted buddhist, went to the Korean temple and asked the monk for a Korean name for bub, based on his date and time of birth to the very last nano-second. The names were also chosen using hussy's birth details. Three names were offered for our choosing. The names were quite weird after we translated them to Chinese to fit with his Chinese name should he attend a Singapore school in future.

 Using bub's date of birth on the lunar (Chinese) calendar, 30 June 2011, and his time of birth: 0701

 

 The three names, when written in Chinese, were as above. I liked the first and second choices, because the third one, was pronounced as "Chan-Yoo" in Korean. It sounded queer to me, and I wouldn't want his friends at school to make fun of him. I had a Chinese name which literally sounded like "new bowl", and although no one ever dared made fun of me, I really hated that name and never used it. I couldn't even remember how to write my Chinese name anymore! Hence, I needed to choose a name that was simple to write (I don't know about bub yet, but I am hopeless in Chinese). The Chinese characters for the third name is nearly impossible to write. It'd probably take bub his entirely lifetime to finally master the skill to write his Chinese name if we chose that.

The first one was 김시준 (Kim Si Jun). I loved this name, AND the Chinese equivalent sounded great too. However, it was really hard to write the Chinese characters - 金詩准. The second one was 김도현 (Kim Do Hyun). The Chinese equivalent was really simple to write, and the Korean pronunciation sounded really "smooth", so we went with our guts and chose Do-Hyun. Bubsy might encounter some problems when registering for his Singapore NRIC, because the Chinese character for "Hyun" does not exist.

We also decided to choose Kim Do Hyun because the number of strokes for the Chinese characters were 8-8-9. Hussy and I met in Sydney on - guess what - 8/8/09. What a coincidence right? It's like bub was destined to be named "Do-Hyun".

Yesterday, I went down to Tai Mao Bi's head office at Toa Payoh Lorong 8 with a flock of bub's newborn hair which was kept after he had his first hair-cut since his birth. Tai Mao Bi actually takes the hair, and preserved them using a special technique into a Chinese hair brush.

The cool thing about this is that it lasts forever, and you can actually write/paint with the brush. I paid about $600 for mine which included a rabbit stamp (as he was born in the Year of the Rabbit) encasing bub's umbilical cord inside. The package includes 2 hair brushes, and a frame. I chose the camel bone brush because it comes in a pair of dragon and phoenix engravings, with meaningful Chinese proverbs and bub's name and date of birth. Some people said to me that I spend way too much on bub, but, you know, he is my first-born. There is always something about the first-born child. A special connection or feeling that makes a first-born special.

Anyway, when I was at Tai Mao Bi, I noticed that they do Chinese namings too for $88. I'm not sure how much my MIL paid the Korean monk to choose bub's names, but I never knew that it cost this much to have someone choose a very special name for your child. In the past, my grandparents would use their special book to choose a name for all the grandchildren (that's how I ended up being called "new bowl"). Maybe it would've been wiser if they had just paid someone to name me.

When I had to register bub's birth with the Registry of Births in Western Australia. It stated, on his birth registration form, that:

Naming a child is a matter of choice. For your child’s surname you can use the mother’s surname, the father’s surname, a combination of the two or any other surname. You many not choose a name that is obscene, offensive, unreasonably long or contrary to public interest.
 
"Any other surname" - this would not even be an option in Singapore, mind you. People discussed extensively about weird and queer names to avoid naming your child. Someone should start to create a list of surnames to avoid. When I was working at Princess Margaret Hospital (PMH), I have seen children with strange surnames like "Smellypants". They were children of YOUNG mothers. It is sad how these young mothers are so irresponsible in giving their child a ridiculous surname.

How did you choose your child's name?