The Story of "Mei"

I've had a few people ask me about the spelling of NatureForce's middle name. There's a story here, so I'll attempt to describe how it all came about.

One Sunday, we had Paul's family over for dinner. As a tradition, we take turns hosting Sunday dinner. As Paul and I were talking about the name NatureForce, someone threw out the name with Mae/May as a possible middle name, and Paul seemed to be okay with it. Paul's mother reminded him that Mae was her mom's middle name, and that NatureForce had some family history connection as well on the Hurd side. I also found out later that NatureForce was a nickname for my namesake and great-grandmother. I asked my mother-in-law how her mother spelled her middle name, and she said that it's "May" on the birth certificate, but Grandma Clark always spelled it "Mae." Okay, so with the family connection confirmed, we put NatureForce's name on our very short list of potential names. See this post for the reason why it was so short.

Some astute readers have seen the reference earlier in my blog about Mei, a character in a Japanese cartoon, My Neighbor Totoro. Why am I familiar with a Japanese cartoon that hasn't really hit it big here in the United States yet (although you'll probably be hearing of it soon; I got word from Amazon that they plan to ship my new English-language (also with the original Japanese), Disney-distributed DVD in March)? I was a missionary for my church, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, back in 1995 and 1996 in the Japan Nagoya Mission. Although I never saw the cartoon itself, Totoro is all over in Japan - talk about merchandising! Here is a stylized picture:














Based on the original:















Although we didn't really name NatureForce partially after Mei, the little girl in pigtails, I asked Paul if we could spell it that way as somewhat of a link to my Japanese history. Also, it turns out that Mei is a common Chinese girl's name... so I thought it would be cool if we could choose a Chinese character for her middle name, just for fun.

My brother, who is fluent in Chinese and is a Chinese medicine practitioner, was a great source for me here; he let me borrow his Chinese dictionary so I could look at the different meanings of the name. We're not really following traditional Chinese naming conventions, because Chinese names often have two parts instead of just one (Mei-Ying, Xiu-Mei, etc., etc.).

The character we chose (above) means "beautiful." Another meaning of Mei, however, is "little sister," which is also appropriate. Bottom line, NatureForce's got an interesting name that I hope she doesn't curse me for when she's older... Paul was a little uncertain (he accused me of being a bit eccentric), but I told him that because he got to choose the name, I wanted to at least spell it the way I wanted. So he gave in.

So that's the story. We call her NatureForce, not with her middle name, but we don't object to others calling her by both names. She's our little beauty. And we love her!