She may be only 16 years old and live on the other side of the planet, but there are getting on for a quarter of a million Chinese babies who have good reason to be very grateful for the British schoolgirl Beau Jessup.
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She came up with the idea after visiting China, where she was asked by a woman to give an English name to her newborn baby.
After initially believing herself unqualified to choose names for babies, she discovered the surge in demand for English names for Chinese children over the last 20 years has resulted in some fairly avant-garde names for children whose parents have not been fully aware of the cultural significance of the monikers they have chosen.
“I once heard of someone called Gandalf and another called Cinderella”.
The way this practice developed means that people have been choosing these names themselves at school, or are given them by an English teacher.
Still, others have ended up named Billboard, Popeye, or Robin Hood.
Beau Jessup’s website has helped more than 200,000 Chinese parents choose English names for their kids.
It then shares the suggestions using the Chinese version of WhatsApp – We-Chat – to allow family and friends in on the action.
It then selects 3 possible names to choose from – along with the meaning of each name and a handful of famous examples.
There isn’t open access to the internet so they can’t use standard baby naming websites that people may use in the UK.
“I’m not really qualified or relevant enough in that baby’s life to be the person to give it a name”, she said. The site asks parents to pick five out of 12 personality traits that closely match their aspirations for their child.
Jessup says she’s happy to have played a part in the lives of so many families and intends to use the money earned to help pay for her university tuition fees. And I never expected it to become more than just a small project.
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Songbu Wang, who chose her son’s English name using the Specialname website, told Gloucestershire Live: “I chose Nathan because it sounds strong, what’s more, I have seen the definition from my Specialname certificate; Nathan means “generous”. It is obviously a nice surprise, but it is definitely a surprise”. “I think English name can influence my child’s life”.
