a search for 'yangie' on dictionary.com
showed no results. the suggestions given were as follows:
Yank, Yankee, Yenisei, Yenisey, young.
the same search on m-w.com (merriam-webster)
showed these options:
yagi, yeaning, yenning, yarn-dye, yenned, Yemeni, yeaned, Yenan, yenta, Yan'an.
none of which comes anywhere close to explaining the curious origin of this
ridiculously sounding name.
so! let us dig further.
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'angie' may have a nice ring to my ears and easy for introductions and friends to remember. but that strange combination of characters is my real name. in mandarin, surnames come before first names. 'james bond' becomes 'bond james', and 'jesus christ' becomes 'christ jesus'. so 'yan-chi tung', which looks like -is really 'tung yan chi', without the dash. 'tung' is pronunced more like 'tong' than 'tongue'; according to m-w.com, 'tong' is a secret society or fraternal organization especially of Chinese in the U.S. formerly notorious for gang warfareand so the taiwanese immergration book of english spellings of chinese names probably figured that translating the family name to 'tong' would be not so good of an idea. 'yan' is pronunced like 'can', 'ban', 'tan', 'dan', 'fan', 'jan', 'man', and various other -an's. it is not pronunced like 'wan', which is less commonly used than any of the other -an's. so it troubles me when the first stabs at pronuncing 'yan' rhyms with 'wan' and not the others. finally, the 'i' in 'chi' is pronuced like the 'ee' in 'gee', 'flee', and 'glee'. often it is pronuced as the 22nd letter of the greek alphabet, which bothers me even more so than the 'yan' pronunciation confusion because of my strong detestation toward the college greek life. 'yan-chi tung' is the most direct translation of my name from mandarin; although i had the choice of changing my name when i became a u.s. citizen, i decided to hang on to it for the sake of uncomformity, and have used it for all legal purposes. |
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Angie, LA (village, FIPS 2165)i'd like to pay a visit one day. dictionary.com gave no entries for 'tung'. however, m-w.com had this: tung tree [n]: any of several trees (genus Aleurites) of the spurge family whose seeds yield tung oil; especially : an Asian tree (A. fordii) widely grown in warm regions;for 'yan', both dictionary.com and m-w.com offered suggestions but no entries, except under 'acronym definition@amazon.com' (found using dictionary.com), where 'yan' has this result: YAN - Yancey Railroad Companynice to know, if i ever want to visit angie, LA. 'chi' proved to be the most informative. aside from being a part of the greek alphabet, 'chi' also has the following definitions: chi [n]: air, spirit, energy of life; The vital force believed in Taoism and other Chinese thought to be inherent in all things. The unimpeded circulation of chi and a balance of its negative and positive forms in the body are held to be essential to good health in traditional Chinese medicine.and also, from 'acronym definition@amazon.com', this list:
from this list i pulled out one entry which doesn't quite belong:
CHI Champlin Oil and Refining Company if you have an answer as to why 'champlin oil and refining company' has the acronym of 'CHI', please send me an email. |
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tung - 1. [n] child; minor; virgin; 2. [adj] bare; barren (land, etc.); 3. [n] a Chinese family name which brings me to my conclusion: the name means 'a bare virgin, which
is a type of jade that could be used as currency, that is like an outstanding,
extraordinary, distinguished, and admirable wild goose.' |
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(yanchi - chi) + (angie - an) = yan + gie = yangie now you know. and knowing is half the battle. |