My Chinese Name

I've got a rather special thing to blog today. When I was googling for Keith's name and tried to search if there is anyone by the same name. Out of fun I google mine as well and you know what I found......? I found my friend :) Yup I found my friend by googling my name.

I think most of you realise that I have not been using my Chinese name since I started working, other than official matters. Not that I do not like my Chinese name nor is it hard to remember but rather I have had someone whom is sharing the same name as me........ in fact our name on our IC is totally identical

By the way we were born in the same year and took our SPM in the same year too. Best part of all is we were both from Penang too. You must be curious whom this person is right....... well the thing that made matter more complicated is that person is a female.

The name that we both shared is Chin Wai Boon

Funny thing is I really don't understand how our name could have been spelt the same manner.

• Chin : I am Hakka and she is Cantonese but I dunno how we can share the same surname because normally Cantonese are "Chan"
  
• Wai : This is the pinyin, since my mum is Cantonese
• Boon : This is the Hokkien pinyin. Normally Cantonese would use "Man"/"Mun" instead

陳偉文 is my name in Chinese character
陳慧文 is Eliza's

As I didn't have any photo of her in hand, this is my prove that this person exist (for those whom doubt me)



It is not something that happens everyday but I doubt you would like it to happen even once like my case.

Something happened about 15 years ago, Eliza lost her wallet and the founder called me instead of Eliza because she searched through her wallet for a contact number hoping to call the owner and she found a match between her IC name with a name in her phone book. The founder was shock to have a guy answering the call (me-lah) and I have to show her my IC to prove to her, when I went to pick up the wallet to return to Eliza, that I am in fact having the same name as the owner :P

The saddest thing is that I have lost contacts with many of my Penangite friends..... I did try to e-mail Eliza but I only got one reply inquiring whom am I then no more news. Sigh!

The only thing that gave us our difference was Eliza for her and Peter for me. Peter was what my mum used to call me since small, other than "Wai Mun". Peter is used more like a nickname to me. When I wanted to put my boy name Keith in his IC, just like my sis, Nicole and the rest, my in-laws gave me a very funny comment:

"What if he doesn't like the name Keith when he grows up?"

In fact I got this comment quite often too. It really made me feel uneasy. I don't want my boy to be Tom yesterday, Dick today and Harry tomorrow :rolleyes: And on a later part I dunno what is my boy's name because I am not updated :P Funny thing is children are given their names by their parents, right? Personally I think if they want to change any names...... Let it be their children's name that they change.