I’ve been giving a lot of thought lately — and I mean a LOT of thought — to my Chinese name. Of course, not being Chinese myself, I’m at something of a disadvantage. (I know I’ve had some of you fooled on this point, what with me being so awesome with the language and all. *cough*)

You know that saying that “ignorance is bliss?” I’m not blissful. I’ve been studying Chinese for almost two years now (give or take a few months). I know just enough to be unhappy. I don’t yet know enough Chinese to be happy, either. I’m still experiencing my growing pains. But, gosh darn it, I want a Chinese name! When I get to Shanghai I want to have my name carved on the bottom of one of those little stampy things so I can sign my paintings with it!

Now… I’ve asked a few Chinese friends about this naming business and they always give me that feh-lan-ke thing that I can never remember how to type. It’s just a transliteration of my English name which, pardon me for saying so, but YAWN.

I want something that’s ME. Something that suits my personality, you know? I want something that tells a story. (Imagine that!)

So, let me show you where my thoughts have been running and tell you why.

First of all, my initials are FF. If you take that first F and flip it horizontally, you get something that looks a lot like a dragonfly. I like dragonflies a lot. That double-F/dragonfly image is actually how I sign my paintings. So when I stumbled across the character 非, I thought… HEY! That looks kind of close! And it’s even got that F sound! Maybe I’m onto something here!

非 - fēi - non-/not-/un-/

Hmmmm. Not sure how I feel about starting my name with a negative connotation like that. Unless… wait. Let me check some of the options for that second syllable.

克  - kè - gram/subdue/to restrain/to overcome/

Hey, now! That might be something! “Unrestrained.” Un-overcome. As in unstoppable. Yeah, I kind of like that! But, of course, when I put those two characters together, it doesn’t mean anything in any dictionary I try.

Still, that would be easy to remember, and not at all difficult to write. I’ll have to get a ruling on this.

But… isn’t this just the first name? Can I go around in China with just these two characters and not get confused with someone else? I mean… okay. Yes. The odds on another Italian-American who is both devilishly charming and absurdly reasonably handsome also being called 非克 are pretty slim. But there’s a lot of people in China! It could happen!

So what about surnames? Family names? The name Fradella is a slightly bastardized version of the word “fratello,” which means “brother” in Italian. Unfortunately, this is an utter nightmare in Chinese! They have a different word for every conceivable permutation of blood relation. I tried to find a word that just meant “brother.” Not older, not younger, not the brother of my sister-in-law’s husband. Just “brother.” Here’s what I came up with:

弟兄 - dì xiōng - brother

But, really… do I want to walk around being 弟兄非克？ Well… maybe!

Anyway, like I said — I’ve been giving this a lot of thought. What do you think?