Lazy Wolf

I'm often asked if I have a Chinese name.

I do, although no one really uses it. One of my wife's mentors gave it to me long before I moved here, which was fortunate because at the time I didn't know any Cantonese, and she saved me from making an egregious error.

When transliterating an English name to Chinese, it's not as simple as approximating the sound. You see, a name like Randall is a mouthful for most Hong Kongers; not only does it begin with "R", a non-existent consonant in Cantonese, it ends in "L", another sound for which there is no equivalent.

I might have just gone with the diminutive, except that saying "Hi, I'm Randy" when shaking hands with the Brits and Aussies around here would have earned me some strange looks.

Knowing that "L" was common at the beginning of many Cantonese words, I asked whether people could just call me Lando; the name wasn't unheard of, it was even in The Empire Strikes Back.

Except that in Cantonese, laahn doh (懶惰) means lazy. Not good.

In the end I received an excellent Chinese name; it approximates the English sounds but has its own special meaning, which has nothing in common with the meaning of Randall (a medieval-English version of the old German name Randwulf (also Randolf), which means meaning Rim (or edge, of a shield) and Wolf).

Attempting to translate Rim Wolf (what the heck does that mean, anyway?) into Cantonese would be pointless, although the nickname Ah-lohng (狼), or Wolf, wouldn't be terrible if people understood its slang definition: a tough or brave guy. The problem is the main slang meaning is a greedy, voracious person, and is sometimes used to describe sexual avarice; in other words, a predator.

To English speakers it sounds just like "long", and I'm not even going to go there.

Sorry, but I'm not going to tell you my Chinese name, because most English speakers can't pronounce it.

That, and I'm just too lazy.

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