Choosing a 태명

Before my brother was born, when my parents didn’t know if the baby would be a boy or a girl (that was their choice), my parents used a “prenatal name.”

Sort of as a joke, they came up with “Obadiah Aurelius Kottke.” The baby's initials were “O.A.K.” so the nickname was “Stumpy.” Ha ha ha. Funny joke. Well, the name is still in use, though now it refers to the family dog.

Besides “prenatal name,” I don’t think there’s a word for this in English. According to my wife, Korean does, though it’s not in my dictionary: tae-myeong (태명, 胎名).

SY and I were talking about what taemyeong we want for the baby. Normally, Koreans use words like "the peanut" or "the strawberry," but I didn't like those. Eventually, we decided on a Chinese name: 小婴 (소영, Xiao3Ying1) .

Literally, it means "Little Baby," though it's also a pun. 婴 is pronounced exactly the same way as 英, the character for "English," a reference not only to me but also to SY.

So it's cute, it's funny (though admittedly, in a convoluted sense), and we like it. I guess that's all you really need for a taemyeong.