Imperial Hero

A good friend of ours, Dr. KJK, showed me and M. what our names would look like as Chinese characters. The first character with what looks like a squiggly capital B is the family name: Tran. Followed by my middle name, L. Then the last two are my first names. Here is mine:

陳黎皇英

Unfortunately for me, I am unable to enlarge this any further, so you'll have to pull out the magnifying glass to count the actual strokes. Apparently, in Chinese, my name means the same as in Vietnamese: Imperial hero!!

The first part of my given name (which starts with H) has several meanings, some of which are: "grand, magnificent, imperial, emperor, heavenly, yellow golden." This is not very different from the Vietnamese at all!

The second part of my given name (which starts with A) means brave, courageous, heroic, brilliance.

There you are, my friends. I'd never really paid attention the definition and symbolism of my name in other languages. Mostly b/c it isn't your typical name like "Sophia" that could be looked up on the internet and it is too complicated to explain. But, now that I know what my name is supposed to look like in the language of my ancestors (I'm 1/8 Chinese, didn't I tell you?), I feel weighted down by a burden of thousands of years of history and culture.

Signing off for today, yours ever truly,

Imperial Hero.