Name of the day

[muckefuck]

Ziba de Weck Ardalan

Comments

[bunj.livejournal.com]

So Ziba de Weck's got hisself a fancy new last name, huh? He's too classy to be hanging out with his ol' friends Vinnie de Smudge and Guido de Killer Pimp. Nah, he's too busy writing them fancy books.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

You can't catch Ziba de Weck! Er isch halt zue schnäll am Säckle!

[fengshui.livejournal.com]

Speaking of names, I've started taking a Chinese class. As someone with your language skills and a decent knowledge of my personality, could you recommend a Chinese name for me? The ones they make from online sources are fine, but I'd be interested in what you would come up with. :)

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

Anything I give you should probably be run past an educated speaker in any case to make sure there aren't any undesirable associations I haven't thought of. Typically, what Chinese speakers do is try to find auspicious characters that sound vaguely like the name you have. I've never been too happy with this approach, not least of all because Chinese is a lousy fit for English (and vice-versa). It's more fun to come up with something based on meaning.

But did we ever figure out the derivation of your surname anyway? The two possible Irish sources that spring to mind are caibín which means "sunken mouth" and cáibín which means "old hat". Neither one is exactly a fantastic jumping-off point!

[fengshui.livejournal.com]

I think Cabeen comes from Caubeen/Caibin: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caubeen

Fun is good. :)

[fengshui.livejournal.com]

Just to give you a final update, the name that I came up with and my teacher approved was 沈天達 (shen3 tian1 da2).

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

An admirable one indeed! I eventually came up with 冠 guān "cap" for a surname, but got stuck on the given name. I was considering "Heaven Gift" as a calque of Greek Theodoros, so you actually ended up pretty close!

[tekalynn.livejournal.com]

Peregrine Bertie, Lord Willoughby D'Eresby.