What's in a Name?

Dear Gaby,

Today marks the 37th week that you have been growing in Mummy's belly. You are officially full-term now and if I start getting contractions and signs of labour, the hospital isn't going to worry.

From the sonogram last week, you were a pretty average and healthy 2.5kg. Mummy's belly has gone all ugly from you stretching my skin as you get bigger. Now, my belly looks like a canvas with an abstract painting of tongues of fire. But alas, I think you will make the battle scars of pregnancy all worth it.

Dad and I have been spending some time on your name. For someone who is not particularly sentimental or into rituals and symbols, I never thought I would be fussing over the meaning of your name. To my surprise, I found myself shooting out emails to friends who have a better grasp of the Chinese language to check whether the characters I chose for your name convey what they are intended to.

So now, what's in a name? Afterall, a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.

Let's start with "Gaby". 

Unfortunately, you were not named after some commendable personality. Dad and I are avid followers of this American drama series, Desperate Housewives. One of the leading characters is called Gabrielle, and is frequently called Gaby. So that's how it started.

But deciding on "Gaby" took a while because it needed self-convincing and a lot of "personalisation" to make the name "ours". To begin with, "Gaby" isn't quite a popular name in Singapore, nor is it popular among Daddy's relatives as we came to find out when they asked about what we had in mind for you. Furthermore, it sounds incomplete and improper, because it is seen to be a truncated form of "Gabrielle" or "Gabriella". Gaby has the potential to sound too babyish, or too bimbotic as well. 

Why we still went ahead to stick on with "Gaby":

• For the lack of any other pleasing alternatives, we were referring to you as Gaby for a good while from the time we the gynae spotted three lines on the sonogram and told us we were expecting a girl. Thus when we had time to rethink your name after the less than favorable responses came from Dad's family, we found it even harder to find a replacement, because it was hard to change the name that we had grown so accustomed to, and had so much affection associated with.
• From the Singaporean kiasu perspective: The "g" in Gaby would put you in the first half of the class register. Having read some research done in classrooms, and my own experience as a teacher, I have found that teachers call on names higher up in the class register more often. I think that that would give you a slight advantage at school, especially in a Singaporean classroom where we still have 30 to over 40 pupils.
• Why extend your name to a Gabrielle or Gabriella, which both sound distinctively Latino -- a culture far from ours -- when in the end, most people will call you Gaby? Besides, Mummy isn't very fond of girl names that end with an -ah at the end. With no offence to people already called these names, the -ah's in names like Anna, Adrianna, Luana, Julia, Sonia and Sophia make them more palatable and predictable as feminine names.
• "Gaby" is a name that is slightly confusing because it is androgynous -- it could have been short for Gabriel, a boy's name, too. Mummy, in her own quirky sociological way of thinking, likes that kind of uncertainty and fluidness. People aren't going to be quite sure about whether you're male or female, until they see a sex marker, or you in person. I like that because there are so many unconscious gender expectations we have once we know the sex of someone, and keeping that a mystery for a while gives people more time to figure you out as a person first, before understanding you as a girl, or a woman.
• Gaby is short and phonetically easily pronounced by people of any culture. We are afterall living in a very globalised world these days. Just look at Daddy and Mummy's families. Uncle Jo is studying in the US, Aunty Cui is in Australia, Mummy studied briefly in California too, while Dad did his Degree and Masters in the US, and now we're in Zurich while he does his PhD. We have cousins and friends who have made their homes in so many parts of the world as well. So since you are going to be exposed to many cultures, we want to make sure that your name doesn't get horribly mangled by speakers of other languages, and that you do not have to go around correcting people on how to pronounce or spell your name.
• Mummy believes that if you grow up to be a nice girl, "Gaby" will become a much more popular name simply because people associate the name with someone nice. Right now, for the lack of exposure to people of that name in Singapore, "Gaby" is just not immediately popular.
• The process and rationale behind choosing your name, is also partly how Mummy hopes your life can turn out: down to earth and fuss free, not having your sex come in the way of your decision making and those made for you, self-defining and confident of being different.

As you can see, most of these thoughts come from Mummy. There hasn't been very much use of the pronoun "we" to include Daddy in this description of how we came to settle on your name. Daddy, the much more practical person that he is, doesn't care so much about what goes into your name, as much as what goes into your cot and room, and which breastpump to get for Mummy. 

(Mummy was pleasantly surprised to find that Dad had done some research and printed out some application forms on childcare for you already. There is a crazy waiting list here in Zurich for childcare, but we hope to get you some exposure to other children and caretakers before you get back to Singapore.)

Now, for your Chinese name. The characters chosen are again, not going to be who you are as much as they are the aspirations Mummy have for you.

 慨立 

kăi lì

A similar rationale was used in ensuring that the phonetics of your Chinese name are pronounceable. That meant that I was avoiding sounds like qi, qin, ci, jing, xi, xing, xiu etc., which non-Chinese speakers have difficulty figuring out how to pronounce, and even when they do know, find it hard to shape their mouth correctly to make an accurate sound. Furthermore, your Daddy speaks no Chinese.

Kai Li also has an English-sounding equivalent, Kylie, which is also a name made popular by singer Kylie Minogue. We did not have so much trouble getting approval for your Chinese name, especially from your Nek Nek, because it is definitely way more feminine sounding, and less uncommon. Daddy, too, took to "Kai Li" way faster than he did with "Gaby".

And well, if you never grow to like "Gaby" the way we have, you can always choose to use the safer "Kai Li".

So after figuring out the sound of your Chinese name, Mummy had to choose the characters.

慨 (kăi) comes from 慷慨大方 (kāng kǎi dà fāng) -- which means generous. This is one of your Daddy's strongest personality traits. It is this generosity of not just resources, but of heart, that makes him both so likable and happy. Daddy is always willing to give. He takes care of his friends and even people he doesn't know very well. He is also not quick to judge, and doesn't bear grudges.

立 (lì) is taken from 独立 (dú lì) -- independence. As what Mummy's Chinese advisors have told her, 立 has never been traditionally used for female names since independence is not a classically desired attribute of a female, especially not in Chinese culture. But independence, for Mummy, doesn't mean being all feminist and independent of men. The independence I hope for you is that of your mind and life. I hope you will be able to confidently choose your own paths in life without being excessively subjected to peer pressure or mass culture. While there still are societal norms that are worth abiding by, we let many less consequential ones limit us needlessly.

Dear Gaby, even before you are born, there are so many hopes and dreams for you. I hope, too, that I will not crush you with these aspirations I have for you. Imposing her desires on us is what my own mother has made sure she never did, and I hope I can give you that gift as well. If I ever do get stifling, promise me you'll gently let me know.

Love,

Your Mummy