introducing.....our chinese names

our chinese teacher, amy, gave duff and me chinese names a few weeks ago. aren't they beautiful? at the top is my name, below it is duff's. most chinese names have two or three characters. the surname, or family name, comes first.

my chinese name is BAI YA LI. the first character, BAI, means pure or white. amy picked it because my name in english (katharine) also means pure. bai is a really common surname. the most common surnames in china are li, wang, long, zhang, and chen. sound familiar? the second character YA means elegant, and the third is LI, beautiful. everyone i have told it to has praised it as a very beautiful name. i think the elegant part is amy's wishful thinking. i have a very complicated name, according to amy.

duff's name in chinese is JIAN DA FEI. his surname, JIAN, means simple. DA means arrive or achieve, and FEI is fly or high. together these mean something like duff will achieve great heights and accomplishments through simple means. amy chose DA FEI because it sounds like duffy, which she thinks is his given name. people here are floored when they discover duffy is his surname. people don't really go by their surnames here. the surnames are so common, we'd be calling 10 out of 40 students in a class by wang.