To my birth family,

I told you in my first letter that I have a younger sister, Susanna, who I call Su. Let me tell you a (long) story about how we got our names.

In English it’s more fun to have names that are 2+ syllables, so my parents thought they’d give Su and I long names.

Lillian and Susanna. Older names, yes, but at least you can get multiple nicknames out of them.

They named me Lillian because my parents like lilies. Mum always likes having vibrant, pink lilies in the garden, and we always get a pot of white lilies every Easter. I also heard from my grandparents that when Mum and Dad were dating Dad gave her a bouquet of red lilies when he proposed to her. Lilies were their flower, a symbol of their love and their marriage. 

When I told my friends this they thought it was the cutest thing. It seems my parents are just as romantic as I am.

But they thought “Lily” on its own was too short (Lily is also a popular name in my generation), so they tagged “An” on the end to name me after my aunt, Anna. Something special to my parents and unique to the other Lilys. And that’s how I came to be “Lillian.” 

My parents ended up calling my sister Susanna because when they found out their second adoption request went through they’d been listening to Oh! Susanna on the radio.

When I compared this to how Australopithecus afarensis got the name “Lucy” Su just stared at me, internally rolling her eyes at how I managed to bring science into the conversation of how we got our names.

A few years ago I was researching name meanings (I went through a phase in elementary school when I liked searching name etymology) and found that both Su’s and my names mean “lily.”

When I told Mum this a few years back she said she and Dad had had no idea. “What a coincidence,” she said happily, "You both have matching names!"

She told this to one of our old neighbours who also thought it was so cute, and tried to nickname us “Japanese lilies,” which I thought was kinda racist, but I digress. (Also, we're Chinese, not Japanese.)

Now Su and I can say our names both mean "lily." I tell people I was named after my parent's favourite flower and my aunt while Su says she was named after a classic American song. Yup, we’re quite the pair.

It’s a bit longer of a story than Xiao Li, since I can’t confirm the exact reasons why the nannies called me that.

Oh, if I can digress again, I learned that in the Mandarin dictionary the word for “lily” is “bǎihé,” and “white lily” is “bái bǎihé.” That's a real mouthful for someone who sucks at Mandarin accents!

I want to ask you how common is it in China to give kids flower names? Can you name kids like my parents did, giving their kids names that mean “flower” but aren’t the flower names themselves? (Sorry, I don’t know enough about Mandarin to understand Chinese names.)

I could talk about Su’s Chinese name, but I’ll save that for another letter. Please look forward to hearing from me again!

Sincerely,

Lillian