Philosophical names (Taiwan)

Colleague Alma at Conoco Taiwan was a mumsy kind of figure, in a positive sense: gentle, soft spoken and kind. I wish I’d got to know her better.

Her husband’s surname is 鈄 Dòu, but it kept getting read as 斜 xié, which means “oblique, slanting” — not a nice meaning at all when applied to a person as it means “not upright”, therefore dodgy or crooked.  He kept getting called 斜先生 / Xié xiānsheng / Mr Slanting.

So when the first son was born, they called him 鈄非斜  Dòu Fēi Xié / “Dòu Not Slanting”, which is a good reminder, especially since the two characters are close together for any reader to see the difference.

For the second son, they came up with 非我 Fēi Wǒ / “Not I”.  This is from the text 秋水 Qiū Shuǐ / Autumn Floods, by the philosopher Master Zhuāng (莊子 Zhuāng Zǐ (/ Chuang Tzu, circa 369–298/286 BC), he of the famous I Dreamt I Was A Butterfly story.

Zhuang Zi and his disciple Hui Zi were looking at some fish swimming.  Zhuang Zi said the fish were happy.  Disciple Hui Zi said, “You are not a fish.  How do you know they’re happy?”  Zhuang Zi said, “You are not I.  How do you know that I don’t know the fish are happy?”

The third son got given the name 非非 Fēi Fēi / “Not Not”.

These three boys (now middle-aged men) must be the only ones in the world with that combination of characters for their names, as well as having such wonderful stories behind them!

For those interested in the full context for the fish story, I’m reproducing it below:

莊子與惠子遊於濠梁之上。莊子曰：「儵魚出遊從容，是魚樂也。」惠子曰：「子非魚，安知魚之樂？」莊子曰：「 子非我，安知我不知魚之樂？ 」惠子曰：「我非子，固不知子矣；子固非魚也，子之不知魚之樂全矣。」莊子曰：「請循其本。子曰『汝安知魚樂』云者，既已知吾知之而問我，我知之濠上也。」

For a translation, see (among others):  https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09608788.2019.1667294

*baidu.com says of 鈄 dòu: (my summary) that it’s a kind of cauldron used in ancient China; that those with this surname are found scattered around in modern-day Zhejiang province and Taiwan.

鈄為釜，支子別姓鈄氏。 鈄姓，在《百家姓》中排名第246 位。鈄姓，中國姓氏，漢唐時以遼西郡為郡望，說明在當時河北有鈄姓族人。如今在浙江縉雲、開化及台灣等地有零散分布。

(Taiwan, 1976)