More About Lia Kate's Name

I have a good friend named Linling who is Chinese but has lived in the States for years. We met while she was a post-doctoral student in Jackson. She now lives in Boston with her smart Harvard-scientist-inventor husband and precious baby boy.

Here is a pic of me and her on our last trip to Boston. Anyway, I am privileged to know her and am so thankful she was gracious enough to translate Lia Kate's Chinese name so that we know exactly what it means.

Lia Kate's surname (which actually comes first in Chinese) is the name of the city where her orphanage is. All of the children in her orphanage have this same last name. Her 2nd name is her "first" name or given name and it means "family" indicating their wish for her to have a family of her own. And her 3rd name means "capital" or "Beijing" and is pronounced "jing." Lia Kate was found and named just three days after the opening ceremonies of the 2008 Olympics in Beijing! And she was named for it. I love this! Another neat thing is that not only do she and I share a birthday, but we were also both born in the midst of the Olympics -- me the 1976 Olympics and her the 2008 -- and her Chinese name will forever reflect that.

Linling showed me that the Beijing Olympics logo ...

... is the character for Lia Kate's name. The running man is the Chinese character for "jing." I also found out that she is likely known as "Jing Jing" in her orphanage. Our little Olympic baby. I love it.

I remember exactly what we were doing on 8.08.08 ... we had friends over to watch the Opening Ceremonies of the Olympics. We ordered Chinese food and I even made Chinese dumplings just like Linling taught me. It was a fun night and I imagined we would one day have other nights like those once we had our daughter. Danny & I even said we needed to order a DVD of the very impressive Opening Ceremonies for our daughter to see one day. We had no idea that at that very moment, our daughter was out there ... just days old ... living with her birth parents who would soon abandon her in the streets. It's a little overwhelming to think about.

Here is Britton (such a baby he was) on that night watching the Opening Ceremonies:

We definitely need to find a copy of the Opening Ceremonies now. I can't wait to share it with Lia Kate one day ... to celebrate her heritage and tell her the story of her name.