What's in a name?

Chinese names don't really translate into English very well- the literal translation on many names is things like: Small Rain, Beautiful Pear, (our ayi's name is Small Red). So in response, many Chinese people will choose their own English name. This has lead to many humorous encounters for me over the past two years. Here are some of my favorites:

Echo

Koffe

Apple (not so strange after Gwenyth Paltrow made it famous)

Squall

Handsome

BoBo

Lucky

Rainbow (a man's name)

Boy


And my all time favorite: Rubber Pixie

But the beauty of choosing your English name is that if you don't like it, you just change it. One example is that a new engineer joined Sev's company and his name was Moses. But once he was hired, he got some feedback (from both Chinese and Americans) that maybe it wasn't the best name so the next day he came to work and announced his new name was Edward- and so it goes.