What's in a name?

Was in Singapore again last week for a couple of days, and this time met up with my eldest uncle and his family for dinner. My eldest uncle is studying calligraphy, which involves paintings, and words. Think he has graduated from the paintings and is pursuing the word writing aspect now. He was showing the different styles which may be used to write a single chinese character.

Luckily for me, he had some "spare" paintings which he offered me to take home, and yes, my place is even more "Cina" now. Substituted some paintings for the chinese ones! Was having a tough time choosing which I liked, and he somehow gave me a painting which he submitted for an exhibition sometime back with some Chinese wordings. My dad translated the chinese wordings which were very meaningful (I forgot already, something about an iron tree bearing flowers, and a golden rooster, etc...), as opposed to the mass produced ones which we can readily get in China. I also have another one dedicated to me (with my chinese name written on the painting) which is now nicely framed up and displayed.

Somemore ah, I commissioned another one (prompted by my eldest aunty!), and I asked for one with our surname on it. Me being chinese illiterate, had a tough time remembering how to write my own name in Chinese! It's been so long already since I wrote my name in Chinese that I had to rake my brains just thinking about the various strokes. Luckily enough, my uncle is Chinese literate! And the outcome should be better than whatever I can ever make out...

Incidentally, what's in a name? My dad previously told me to say "Muk Yi te Yang" when asked about my surname, and I finally understand after reading here.

The Yang character is a derivative from the word for "Sunlight." However, a search in any dictionary reveals it to be a type of tree such as a poplar or a willow tree. The character is composed of two parts, the left part means wood referring to a type of tree in ancient myth used to measure the height of the sun thereby establishing the calendar.

The second part on the right hand side of the character is a graphic description of "the sun rising over Tanggu" (the place in ancient myth where the sun rose). In Tanggu there was a type of large lizard in the water, now known as a dragon, also called a thunder-beast. That is why Tanggu was represented by the character yi [second character in the ‘large lizard’ cited above], pronounced yang, and its master was Fu Xi (the founding ancestor of mankind in ancient myth, aka Xi He), and its heavenly almanac was called the Book of Changes (Yijing) (the yi character is the same as the right-hand component of the lizard character and the Yang family character).

What does your name mean?