My name

My name is Yanyuan Chen, and I am from China. I was born in a traditional Chinese family, and my grandfather gave my name to me. In fact, I don’t really like my name because many girls have the name in the year that I was born, 1987. I think I accept the name just because my grandfather gave it to me. I didn’t know the meaning of my name until my parents told me why they chose the name for me. In China, many families give meaningful names for their newborn babies. They hope girls can be beautiful and kind, so did my grandfather.

In Chinese, “Yan” represents beauty, and “Yuan” represents kind. My grandfather and my parents hoped that I could be a beautiful girl, so they gave me the name. I love my grandfather even though I have no impression of him because he died when I was a little girl. For me, my name is not only a name, but also a gift that my grandfather sent me. For many it is just a really common name, but for me, it has a special meaning.

 I gave an English name for myself after I came to the United States, because I found it was difficult to accurately pronunciation my Chinese name for foreigners. In fact there is someone that has the same name with me in my class, so I decided to give myself an English name. I think it is easy to pronounce and easy to remember.