Evan Almighty!

Ha ha…yeah, I sure hope to able to use that in a sentence one day…ha ha. Anyway, when it came to the selection of my Chinese characters, Papa & Mama sought the help of Mama’s parents to choose a suitable Yi and Wen character for me.

After a thoughtful and careful process of a few days (thank you Ah Por and Ah Kung), they came up with my Yi and Wen characters, as shown in the image above.

Yi means firm, resolute, determined (as in Yi Li)

Wen means suave, elegant, refined, cultivated (as in Wen Hua)

Personally, I think being resolute and suave sure sounds good for my days ahead!

How my name came about...

Papa & Mama explained to me that the task of coming up with my name took months and months of browsing through name books, getting suggestions from family and friends and even consulting a Chinese pastor to be in Singapore!

Anyway, three names were shortlisted – Evan, Benjamin and Collin. After a few more weeks of shouting my name (hey, I can hear from inside Mama’s tummy, you know) a thousand times everyday, Papa & Mama decided that Benjamin was quite a mouthful – so that left Evan and Collin. Both were too nice to drop so they decided to keep both, that is by making one of them my Chinese name. Since Evan in Chinese (Yi Wen) sounded nicer, the tentative draft was set – Collin Cheah Yi Wen.

For the curious cats, meaning of Evan from www.thinkbabynames.com :
The boy's name Evan \e-van\ is pronounced EV-an. It is of Welsh origin. Variant of a Gaelic name anglicized as John (Hebrew) "the Lord is gracious". In Celtic, the name means "young warrior". In Welsh, it means "God is Good". It is also used as a short form of Evangelos, which means "good messenger" in Greek. In Hebrew, Evan means "rock". See also Evian.

Will write more about my Chinese name later. Feeding time. Yummy.

Collin is my name!

For whatever reason, I have been given the name Collin Cheah Yi Wen by my Papa and Mama. Must make note to ask them how they came up with this name. Ah well, I guess I can live it. Better than Diego or Ronaldo, right? Mama doesn’t seem to like those names. ;-P

Did some basic research on my name and this is an extract of it, taken from www.thinkbabynames.com :

The boy's name Collin \c(ol)-lin\ is pronounced KAH-lin. It is of Scottish origin. Variant of Colin, which is of Irish, Scottish and Gaelic origin, and its meaning is "young creature". Diminutive form of the medieval name Col or Colle, a short form of Nicholas (Greek) "people of victory". In Scotland, it has been used as an Anglicized form of Cailean (Gaelic), popular among the Campbells and the MacKenzies.

Collin has 2 variant forms: Collen and Collins. Baby names that sound like Collin are Colwin and Cullin. Secretary of State Colin Powell; actors Colin Farrell, Colin Firth. Colin has 6 variant forms: Cailean, Colan, Col, Cole, Colle and Colyn. Baby names that sound like Colin are Colwin, Calan, Cailin, Collen, Colwyn, Cullin, Galin, Glin and Kalin.

Collin is a common male first name and a very popular surname (source: 1990 U.S. Census).