I was adopted from China at 11 months and was given a name in the orphanage. My Chinese name is 林惠妃。I study Chinese currently, and am just unsure of the meaning of my name. I have been given some answers, but I am still confused as to why I would be given this name considering my background.
Add a comment
|
2 Answers
林 is a common Chinese surname. It means "forest"
惠 means "kindness" or "virtuous"
妃 is a royal title refers to 'lady' or 'princess' (prince's wife) e.g. Princess Diana (戴安娜王妃). It was also referring to 'imperial concubine' in olden time.
the word 妃 is now commonly used for female name
So your Chinese first name 惠妃 roughly translated to "lady of kindness" or "virtuous lady" (you can ignore the meaning of the surname 林)
You are named 惠妃 /Huì fēi/ because it kind of sounds like 'Ritchie'
惠妃 is a title given to Emperor's wives, there were 13 women in the history of China who were given this title, the most famous one being the wife of Kangxi of the Qing Dynasty. See:
- https://baike.baidu.com/item/%E6%83%A0%E5%A6%83/8514547#viewPageContent
- https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E6%83%A0%E5%A6%83_(%E5%BA%B7%E7%86%99%E5%B8%9D)
惠 is also an abbreviation of 贤惠, which means virtuous.
