Our dads, armed with their very old books* on the calculation of names helped us shortlist a few for Baby. And that is one not-so-straight-forward process.
This is what I learnt about the name-calculation process (simply because everyone feels that I have plenty of time - I do- and I could come up with more options on my own)
1) Strokes (bi hua)
Calculate the name according to strokes. Apparently there are certain magic combinations which bode well and some we should avoid.
Like for some surnames the second character should have 8 strokes and the third should have 10 strokes. The strokes are calculated based on Traditional Chinese characters.
2) The five elements
I can never get the relationship between the five elements right. Each character is of a certain element (it can be wood, or fire, or metal... Or earth.. Or water). Certain elements will 'clash' and if that happens within a name, that's not good.
3) Meaning of the characters
Each character has a meaning tied to it and some books will give you a very generic forecast of what your life may be like.
Certain characters depict prosperity and fortune (though it may not be throughout the whole life. Some characters started off excellent but indicate worries and troubles in the later part of life) while some may have foreboding meanings behind it.
4) Sound of the name
This is simple. The name will have to sound good and not awkward, right?
Of course, it's impossible to have the best of *all* worlds. Very often, the names that are good based on the calculation of strokes and elements may not have a very good meaning behind it. And they might possibly sound awkward.
That is exactly what happened to us during the name selection process. Amongst the list given to us, we only managed to find one that barely made the mark (the name looks good but it sounded really awkward). I mixed and matched the characters and finally came up with a pretty decent name but the hubby didn't quite like the sound of it.
We tried our luck in asking Baby to choose her own name (from the two) since she did pretty well in voting for the winner for MasterChef, but she didn't quite want to participate in this one.
We really didn't want to make a slip-shod decision (two isn't much of a selection) so we ended up engaging the service of the master who helped us with the Fengshui of the house, just to give us a bit more options.
The name will be calculated based on the ba zi (time and date of birth). And that is supposedly the most accurate and best way of calculating the name. The DIY method as mentioned above is only generic. Which means that after all the hassle of selecting a 'good' name, one may find that it doesn't suit the ba zi at all and the name is essentially... 'not ideal'.
Such a complicated process but we still decide to go ahead with it.
At least for now, we are kind of settled on baby names (we just have to wait, then decide later) and I've one more item off the list.
* The books are really so old (at least thirty years old) that I find that they have a limited range of characters to choose from. And they often have words that well... sound strange in our modern society. Who names their children 'duck'? Or 'smoke'? Or 'kill'?
From the books it's also pretty evident how they favoured the males in the past. There's really little feminine sounding characters to choose from.
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