Introduction
I introduce myself to non-Burmese as follows:
- My name is HLA MIN (လှမင်း)
- Hla (လှ) means “handsome” and Min (မင်း) means “king”.
Misspelled & Mispronounced
My name has two words and six letters.
It is interesting to note that my name has been misspelled and mispronounced in several ways.
They include
- HAL
It is an American name. It is also the name of a rouge computer in science fiction. The letters precede those of IBM (International Business Machines) by a position. - HALAL
It means “clean food” for Muslims. - LA
It is a musical tone. - LAH
It is Singlish (Singaporean English) - MINH
It is a common name for Vietnamese. - MING
It is a Chinese name (e.g. Ming Dynasty)
Speeches on names
I gave a series of speeches:
- Meaning of names
- Naming conventions
- Names of people
- Names of places
- Names of companies
- …
At Toastmasters meetings, I asked the attendees if they know the meaning of their names. Several tried to Google their names.
Remembering names
One way to remember names is to register them with an association.
Examples:
- Stein means a rock. Einstein means “one rock”.
- Peter means “the rock”. Variations include Bedr, Pedro and Peta.
- Deep means “light” and “wisdom”. Deepavali (or Diwali) is the Festival of Lights.
Deepak is an Indian name. - San is a prefix for male saints.
San Francisco and San Jose are the Spanish names for St. Francis and St. Joseph. - Santa is a prefix for female saints. Examples include Santa Anna, Santa Barbara and Santa Clara.
- Santa Cruz (Holy Cross) and Corpus Christi (Body of Christ) are names of cities in California and Texas.
HlaMin 