My name

My Name

My name sounds funny, and it has two different pronunciations in Chinese. My name is Yanyuan, but it has different meanings between Yan and Yuan.  In Chinese Yan means beautiful or colorful, but Yuan means to be a gentlewomanly lady. However, I only found out my name has two pronunciations after I went to elementary school, and I learned Yuan has the same sound with money. Consequently, my classmates always laughed at me when they were pronouncing my name.

One story from my name that I heard from my mom was when I was born, my grandfather named me Yanting. Nonetheless, my mom thought this name was too common, and there were three babies with the same name who were living in the same village. Later, my mom changed my name to Yanyuan.

I loved this name until last semester because I met a classmate that has the same name as mine. The woman who has the same name with me in the same class and our classmates had a hard time figuring out who was who. Moreover, this is the only person I knew that has the same name with me, so I think my name is not special anymore. Thus, I hope I could love my name like before.