The story of my Chinese name

　　My Chinese friend, Shen Nan, gave it to me. Here's how: When you give up your own alphabet, you give up a lot. You leave a lot behind. Like sound. When I look at English letters, I hear them; but when I look at Chinese characters, I don't. Only the silence that in them is for me.

　　William, Shen Nan says, my given name in English. It sounds foreign in her mouth. Associating freely, she decides on Wei Yang, and once again I am named. Chinese is a tonal language, which is to say it speaks itself musically. It sings. The Chinese only have four hundred some different syllables to work with, but they keep changing the tones of those syllables so that an infinite variety of sounds and meanings is possible.

　　Basically, there are four tones. A favorite example in Chinese language texts is ma: neutral in the first tone, or no tone, voiced as ma and meaning "mother." In the second tone, rising, ma means "hemp" or "rope." Ma, falling and rising ambiguously in the third tone, means "horse". "Scold" is what ma in the fourth tone, falling, means you have to be sure of yourself, or at least sound sure of yourself, to say it and be taken seriously.

　　Wei Yang:

　　Wei in the fourth tone, Yang in the second is no more a neutral or ambiguous name than Shen Nan. Shen Nan is a neutral or ambiguous woman. No first or third tones for me. But it's not that simple; it never is in Chinese. And Shen Nan is not here to unconfuse me. I still have choices to make, she tells me, if I want to be able to write my name as well as say it. And I do; she promises to teach me how.

　　Every sound in Chinese can be represented by more than one character and each character means something quite different. So I have to choose which characters I want to represent Wei and Yang; therein lies my dilemma. Wei, Shen Nan tells me, in the fourth tone, falling but sure of itself, can mean "ancient" or "glorious" if I choose one character; an army officer high up, she says, but not a general; a captain maybe, if I choose another character, or "blue", the color not the mood, if I choose yet another. Yang, in the second tone, rising, can also mean many things, depending on which character I choose. It can mean the "sun", if I want it to, or something "foreign", "exotic". Yang can mean a "sheep" too. All I have to do to write myself in Chinese is choose my characters. I like the plural sound of that choosing. And it is enough for me to know that I can be, in Chinese, "Ancient Sun" or "Blue Sheep" or "Captain Exotic" as my mood moves me. Thanks to Shen Nan.