What's in a name? Mengkai (孟楷), Chiachien (嘉倩) and Mengtian (孟田)

In case you were wondering about some of the characters on the banner of our blog: 孟楷 = Mengkai, Gareth's Chinese name. 嘉倩 (Chiachien) is Vivian's Chinese name. 孟田 (Mengtian) is Fiona's Chinese name. I have also taken to using Mengkai in my email address, my Twitter handle and elsewhere online.

The Meng (孟) comes from Mengzi (孟子) aka Mencius, the famous Chinese philosopher to follow Confucius (孔子). Meng is phonetically similar to Morgan, both starting with the M sound. Since I took a philosophy minor in university this is suitable. I can be a thinker at times, so it is an appropriate name on many levels.

The kai (楷) character denotes the "modern" style of Chinese calligraphy (楷書) developed around 200 AD. Kai is a fitting name for a writer and editor like myself. The other meaning of kai (楷) is model or pattern (楷模), which in other contexts can be used to describe clarity, detail and orderliness. There is a personality connection here for me too.

Vivian's Chinese name is Chiachien (嘉倩). Chia 嘉 is an auspicious character, and can be loosely translated as excellence or honor. Chien 倩 means lovely or beautiful, a popular character for female names.

Fiona's Chinese name is Mengtian (孟田). The tian 田 character means rice paddy or field. 田 is one of those forgiving pictogram characters that actually looks somewhat like the thing it represents. Mengtian as a spoken name evokes the poetic metonymy that makes Chinese enjoyable to hear and contemplate. Without seeing the characters one could think that Mengtian = a different Mengtian: 夢田 or 夢天, "dream field" or "dream heaven" respectively.