While we still can’t agree most of the time on what to name the baby, I was sure from the beginning that I wanted our baby to have a Chinese name. Theoretically, two thirds of the work should have been done for us in coming up with a Chinese name. In a traditional three character name in Chinese, the family name is the first name (So Kang is my first name). The middle name is a generational name (My middle name is Ding, which is the same middle name as my brother and all of my cousins in the same generation). The last character of a name is the character specific to the person (my last name is Wen, and I am the only person in my family that has that last name.) The middle name, or generational name, is determined by the lines of a 20 line poem, and each generation follows in accordance to the poem. So I thought, easy enough, our baby’s name is Kang Tswing (which is the next generations middle name, as dictated by the poem) and something we determine.

Unfortunately, we hit a snag when we realized that in a typically male-dominated Chinese family tree, women are not considered part of the tree anymore once they are married off, and are considered part of the husband’s tree. My family wouldn’t let me have Kang as the first name anymore and claimed it had to follow Robleto. But since Robleto is not very Chinese, they had to reluctantly make up a Chinese last name for Greg, who insisted on a Chinese baby name on my behalf.

This is how Greg became the first ancestor to start the Lo family, otherwise known as the dot next to the Kang family tree. Our little girl’s Chinese name is Lo Tswing Shou (picked out by my stepmother and meaning graceful and feminine). Unfortunately, once our little girl is married off, she will no longer be on the family tree, which potentially leaves Greg to be the first and last ancestor of the Lo Dynasty unless we have a son. It could be a very short-lived dynasty, characterized as the only one of Chinese Robletos, but at least we got a name out of it.