Story: Pig, Ham, Bacon: Come!
ref: http://www.omfisaan.org/?p=381#more-381
(http:///www.omfisaan.org)
Thai people have beautiful names. Only they are seldomly used. They are written in documents and said at official occasions. But in everyday life, only the nickname is used.
To outsiders, the nicknames can have a funny ring. ‘Bird’ is the most common name, followed by ‘Small one’. From a western perspective, that is quite accurate to describe most Thai, yet something doesn’t seem quite all right when a sturdy guy with a beer belly is called ‘Small one’. Yet it is as common as hearing a teeny-weeny woman being addressed as ‘Fatty’.
Nowadays, often English names are used. These names don’t necessarily need to be words that are fitting names to western ears. ‘Bank’ is the most common name. It sounds nice, and it clearly shows where the priorities of the family are. A while ago I met ‘Dollar’. For, his father explained to me, he had to work abroad to be able to pay the bride price, so he called his first child ‘Dollar’.
The English vocabulary of most Thai however is fairly limited. To keep it simple, common names within one family are A, B, and C. It starts to become a bit more confusing when English names are combined with Thai tone jokes. (Thai is a tonal language.) What are the names of your sons? Joe, Joe, and Joe. For a while I didn’t look too intelligent, but slowly it dawned. Every Joe had his own tone. But which tone belonged to which Joe never became quite clear to me.
The funniest combination I heard from a colleague. She was shopping when she heard a mother call her children: Moo! Come! So far, so good. ‘Moo’ means ‘Pig’, which hardly is a complimentary name in my book, but still cracks the top-10 of popular names in Thailand. But next came: Ham! Come! Bacon! Come! And there they came, running to their mother. She went home with her car full of meats.
My Comments:
hello Marten! hope you're well! love the website and stories... and what a lovely house without glass!
when i was young and lived near a local village in singapore, many chinese people were officially named after animals. one lady, who used to cycle by our home 2 hours every morning to help my grandma with housework, was called "Ah Zhu" (means "pig" in hokkein, a chinese dialect). another popular name was "Ah Gao" (dog). i've heard that the story behind naming children after animals was that the parents needed to protect their babies from being taken away by evil spirits. by calling out animal names, they hope that the evil spirits will be fooled into thinking that there are no children around... well, that's how the saying goes. anyway, i always thought it was rude to greet "Aunty Pig", even if it was really her name and she accepted it pretty gracefully.
sets me thinking about parents who will do anything to protect their children, even if it meant selling them or giving them away (this is very common in singapore too - but more in the past when people had debts and no money to feed their children - my own grandmother was one of these children who was "given away" - usually a girl is given away so that she can be of help around the house of the adopted family).
so back to my thoughts on parenthood - think it must be a huge comfort when any parent can understand and appreciate how our God is like a protecting, loving father, and that everything He plans and does for us are always in our best interest, even if it's a painful experience...
was just sharing with my 2 boys about how Jesus taught the Lord's prayer - Jesus starts the prayer as "Our Father," and not "My Father"... this helps me realize how wonderful it is to be given (a Gift) the privilege of being a child of God - not by good works, or by good behaviour, or by being born to a christian/catholic family...
i found it funny that the boys then ask me who they should consider their real father - Andrew or God? hmmm... got stuck there! lol anyway, my answer was simply this - Andrew is their "earth father" and God is their "heavenly father" - now they have 2 fathers caring for them at the same time, 2 fathers to run to for anything...
keep writing!! it's lovely reading the blogs and learning more about your experiences!
God Bless!!
jeannette
