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I don't have the same problems

1. Family Name/Surname
Ong - meaning "king". ong is the hokkien pronounciation of "wang2". Equivalent surnames are "wong" in cantonese and "heng" in teochew. according to my dad, we have royal origins, cannot be proven now.

2. Chinese Given Name
Wei Wen - a very boyish name. there are more boys called wei wen than there are girls. it has to do with my mother being english educated. but then again, i have to thank her for not giving me a name weirder than what i have now - it could have been much much worse than this. I share the same "wen" as my sister who's called "Hsiao Woen", spelt differently but it is the same chinese character. We don't have a generation name, but there are a number of my cousins using the word "wei" like mine - not the exact same word but sounds the same. So there are a couple of "Ong Wei___" in my extended family.

3. English Given Name
Because my parents are english-educated (in 1950's and 1960's there were chinese schools and there were english schools in Singapore. Chinese schools used mandarin as the primary language of teaching while English schools of course taught in english), so my sister and I have english names! hers is "Stephanie" while mine is of course "Stella", which is still the name I go by.

So my name on all official documents in Singapore is "Ong Wei Wen Stella".

Because mine wasn't a clear-cut case of 3 words i.e. first, middle, last name configuration, things start to get a little complicated during college. I think they didn't really know how to identify me in London. Sometimes, i was called "Wei Ong" but there were a few of those around. Sometimes i'm called "Wei W. Ong", which again i wasn't very happy with. eventually i got fed up and styled myself "WWS Ong" - easy to write, saves a lot of time during written examinations when you had to print names on every single sheet of paper!

When I got baptised in '06, i took the name "Natalie" because my birthday is Christmas in Australia, NZ and Antartica. Nah, i just liked the sound of it. ;) so my gmail account is stella.natalie@gmail.com. Get it now? I said it wasn't as complicated, right? Have i confused you enough? I could continue about the structure of Chinese names you know, but that's for another day.

Signing off on a Friday afternoon. Have a great weekend!

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