What is your Chinese name?

刘 昱彤 Liu Yutong

What does your name mean?

My name means red sun and daylight, my parents went to the temple to and “divined” this name based on my eight characters to balance my five elements.

What is your English name? (Please write in pinyin if you don’t have one)

Winnie

Who gave you your English name?

Myself

Is there a pronunciation/meaning connection between your English name and Chinese name?

No, simply because I grew up loving pooh bear so I gave myself the name Winnie.

Have you ever abandoned your English name? What was the reason?

When I was in elementary school, I was called Sunny, my father named me that. Which has a similar meaning to my Chinese name, but I abandoned this name because there were too many people with the same name, and I didn’t like the pronunciation of the word. To me, Sunny alone just isn’t enough to capture the poetic feeling of my name.

Does your name ever give you any funny, embarrassing, or uncomfortable experiences?

Because my legal name is still Yutong in the english speaking world, I still have to use it on many procedures and bank accounts. There’s many people can not distinguish the names start with “Yu” since many people’s name start with “Yu”, they would confuse me with others and then say “because you two’s names are too similar I can not help it.”

Do you prefer your Chinese name or your English name? Which name better represents your own identity?

Maybe because my English name was named by myself, sometimes I feel more comfortable as Winnie, and I feel that the pinyin pronunciation of my Chinese name makes me very detached in the English environment. I really like the word 昱 in my name, but after it becomes “Yu”, it loses that meaning of “new day". In that case I would prefer Winnie and I feel more comfortable with it.