Renzo Chan = Renzo Chan Yu Chung 陈宇聪

When I first thought about our Baby Chan's chinese name, the only thing I am very sure about was.. I want to give him 2 characters instead of just 1 and I am not going to consult any name selection masters. With thousands over years of Chinese history, and me having no professional knowledge nor experience with naming a baby, you can imagine how many kinds of combination I was having in mind when I first got started.

I searched high and low on chinese naming websites for an auspicious name but to no avail. Those so called "good-fate" names can be really weird. For example, 陈风涵。 Yup it looks not bad but it sounds like "风寒(having a cold??)".. How can I give Baby Chan such a name??

So, I discussed with my all time favorite "counsellor" - my sister Kelly, for a whole day on Skype. Because she's given a really nice name to my niece Cherry 嘉莹, sounds like some Hongkong celebrity's name isn't it? And the conclusion is, forget about those auspicious names, that's our baby's fate and we should not try to control or change it anyway. Just come up with anything that is pleasing to ear, nice to read, and of course most importantly easy for our baby to write. I am sure that Win mentioned at one time that he does not want our poor kid to spend hundreds of seconds on writing down his full name during exams while others are already on their 3rd questions of the paper..

So my sister suggested something I personally like a lot - 陈启聪 (brilliant man! I wonder how she managed to think of it though). But the only problem is, the Cantonese spelling "Kai Chung", sounds a bit like a hokkien profanity to me.. Haha.. Thus after much consideration, I changed that to 陈宇聪. No special reason or meaning of that, just that I like the word "宇". Win straight away gave me a green light on that. But my parents suggested me to check with my in laws as they might have different ideas about it. So during one of our home visits on Sunday, we asked Win's father as his mother was not at home. Father immediately took out a piece of paper and wrote down "陈维亮". We can tell from there that he's been thinking about Baby Chan's name for a really long time. Father said "陈是很旧的意思，维亮就是希望能在陈旧中维持光亮" (陈 means old in chinese, so 维亮 means maintaining the shine). What a meaningful name!!! We were truly in a dilemma this time because most people we asked prefer 宇聪 as it sounds more cultivated, suave and refined(in a way), whereas 维亮 has a profound meaning plus it is a name given by Baby Chan's grandfather.. We struggled for weeks and in the end decided to go for 宇聪 since we both love it more, and most of our friends share the same view also. Personally I also feel good because Baby Chan is so close to me and I feel him everyday during my pregnancy, I believe giving him a name myself is really something I should do and can be very proud of. But of course on the other hand, I feel very sorry to my father-in-law. I guess he must be quite disappointed, but being a very understanding and considerate father, he agreed with us and said that the most important thing is we like the name. My mother-in-law also prefers 宇聪 so we got full support from her too.

This name will well follow Baby Chan's whole life and we wish that he will like it as much as we do~~

Baby Chan = Renzo Chan

So after knowing Baby Chan's gender from the full scan that Feli had on 1st Apr, it was time to come up with a name... Something unique (i presume all parents say that... even Tom, Dick and Harry's dad & mum) that makes him stand out from the crowd. My parents did a great job... 26 years and I haven't met another Winson, though I have countless friends by the name of Zhixiang(志翔), though admittedly, I'm the only one with those 2 characters...

Anyway, so Feli and I tasked it in a simple and fair way, I was to come up with an english name for Baby Chan, and she will think of a chinese one, well... we didn't have much choice either, considering I haven't written anything in chinese since my 'O' Levels and the fact that I got a C6 for my mandarin didn't help either.

Thinking of name is something I do pretty often... I play games all the time and naming characters is mandatory for most games to even start. But naming my baby is a whole lot different. I mean, I can't be naming my kid 'Hellscream' or 'Ghosteer' eh? Well, I did initially want to name him 'Ronix' (named after 'Xyronix', one of my 5427892 game characters)... but to violent objections from various parties, most notably my dear brother Wilson, whom immediately googled it and retorted that naming babies after wakeboarding manufacturers ain't the wisest move. And yeah.. something in me agreed with my bro and thus I was thrown back into the spiral of alphabets that by then had all been flashing in my mind in all sorts of permutations. So after days of careful consideration (self-proclaimed), and brain-storming with friends and colleagues, I shortlisted three names.

1) Xavier

2) Dominic

3) Renzo

Xavier is a name that Feli have been liking for a while and because both of us wanted a name with either an 'X' or a 'Z' in it (cos it looks cool.. LOL) it was shortlisted.

Dominic was a suggestion from my favourite colleague, Kelly Chia (as oppose Feli's sister Kelly Cao). Kelly has a lovely daughter by the name of Chloe, and she told me that when she was preggie, she picked Chloe as the name for a girl and Dominic for a boy. Thumbs up for uniqueness and +1 to shortlist.

Lastly came Renzo, which was a name that I kinda remembered from either a Japanese show or a Japanese game and it ringed in me. Not only that, it was also a Louis Vuitton Graphite Damier bag that I have been eyeing on. Kelly was the one who suggested that it was quite a unique name, which I personally agreed.

The eventual winner was Renzo because when I smsed Feli about it, both her sister and her loved it. I guess it might be subconsciously due to the fact that it is an LV bag's name (though she claims that she didn't know it was...=P)

A simple look up on babyname websites revealed that the name Renzo is of Italian and Japanese Origins. It is the short form for a city in southern ancient rome and in Japanese, it means "Third Link", which is pretty fitting, considering Feli and myself are the first two links..=P

So Renzo Chan it is... up next, a pretty chinese to match... feli, kao ni le~!