The Simplification of the Chinese Characters

In a moment, I'll be going back to edit the previous to posts with a name update, but before doing so, I wanted to explain why. Apparently, in an effort to promote literacy, China has simplified its the written language over time. You can read a bit of basic information about it here. In doing so, though, some of the details of the language are lost, making the meaning of the characters less obvious.

Marcie's current first name, which we thought was Li, is actually Ji. How did we find this out? Well, when we received our Fed Ex package with the beautiful new photos, all the paperwork had "Ji" crossed out and "Li" written in. So I faxed a copy of our acceptance document to a good friend of mine, whose mother was born in Chongquing. She and her mother reviewed the characters and reported that the name was actually "Ji" and not "Li." Then, I showed the paperwork to my mother-in-law, who is from Hong Kong and reads Chinese characters, and she confirmed for me that it's "Ji." The difference between the two characters is an extra stroke at the top of the character-- a single line. It's very subtle. But the difference in the name's meaning is enormous.

"Li" means plum (there are actually 4 ways to pronounce the word Li and four meanings, but the one given to us was plum). "Ji," on the other hand, means season. Again, there are different meanings for the word "Ji," but the character "Ji" in our daughter's name is season. So instead of her name meaning "plum rich fortune," her name means "season of rich fortune." How cool is that? What a great name! So Marcie will actually be Marcie YangFuJi.

On a separate note, for those of you wondering why we are keeping the surname Yang (which does NOT rhyme with "twang" but is more of a cross between how Americans would say "yung" and "yong"), we have been advised (by our Chinese friends and family) that the surname is actually quite important-- and in some ways more important than the first name-- and that the name would be incomplete without it. Even though Yang is probably the name of the orphanage director, or maybe it comes from the nearby Yangtze River, it's what will tell Marcie who her "siblings" from the orphanage are if she decides to trace back her roots. So we're keeping it. And we like how it sounds better than just FuJi. So there you have it-- my expose on Marcie's name.