We have a name!

With no electricity for 3+ days thanks to Hurricane Irene we had plenty of time to think and talk and DH and I finally have decided Wen needs a name and here it is:

Amy Joy

Turns out it was a popular choice with our other kids and there are some neat "coincidences"  between the English and Chinese.

Amy comes from Old French Aimee and Latin amatus meaning loved, or dearly loved, or beloved. 

Amy will experience the love of a family soon. The kind that doesn't depend on circumstance, performance, appearance, or anything other than she belongs to this family - she is grafted in and one of us.

Joy of course means joy and I pray there will plenty of that around our home.

I went looking to see what the sounds "A - me" mean in Chinese. Nothing impressive, but I did find that ài 爱 which sounds more like "I" means "to love; affection; to be fond of; to like".


It sounds more like "may" than "me", but mèi 妹 means "younger sister" and pronounced with a different tone měi 美 means "America; beautiful". I thought it was very interesting.

Keeping her Cinese name (minus the surname given by the orphanage) is important. It is part of her identity. It is also connected to the person who found her when she was abandoned as an infant in an obstetric hospital. Clearly her birth mother wanted her to be found and to be safe.