What’s in a name? 2024 Edition
This blog post will be all about Me.
Me, Me, Me. DUH.
If you know me, you might have observed that I like learning about languages, and I like to learn about names and their origins. I previously about how I got my not-so-nickname, Lessa in an old blog post. (Read all about it here)
More about me: My maternal grandmother’s family spoke Spanish. However, she was one of the youngest and for some reason was not taught it. My paternal grandfather was from Xiamen. He ran away from home on a boat to go to the Philippines. But because life was hard back then, my father was unable to get into a Chinese school. (He does basic math in it, though) Sometimes I wonder what could have happened had I learned them both, right? (I took up Spanish in the Instituto C when I was younger, but I don’t remember a lot) Anyway, bless both their souls, since they passed away before I was even born (Lola) and when I was grade 6 (Lolo).
Lately, I have been dabbling (or is it doodling?) with ChatGPT4 & DALL-E. Whenever I get bored of practicing prompts, I ask it to interpret songs, lyrics and occasionally, old poetry or essays of mine. (I will have to write my thoughts about this in another blog again in the future, but for now, it’s all in my IG)
Anyway, so I was doodling in my diary how to write in different languages my name. In Baybayin (ᜎᜒᜐ), Korean (리사), Thai (ลิสา), etc. No reason, I was just feeling tired from a reading self-assignment, I wanted to reset my brain. (Yes, I reset my brain by learning about something else. Why?)
So, I don’t have a Chinese name, but, I learned that my name could be,
丽莎
…in Simplified Chinese. But in Traditional Chinese, I could be: 麗莎
Obviously, I didn’t stop there: I had to learn what it means, what are the radicals, and if they mean something similar in Japanese. (Since that’s the only language I am studying with radicals) I went into a youtube/google wormhole and what I learned, I asked DALL-E to interpret.
Here are the results:
First, I asked it to interpret the characters on their own. I entered both the simplified and traditional form. I did not put the meaning of the characters or their origins, except for 2 of these images (the ones with antlers)
麗 is simplified into 丽 and it means “beautiful”. The character 麗 has a radical kanji inside (鹿) which means “deer”, hence, I suppose, the reason why DALL-E gave her antlers, giving a very “nature” vibe. (And probably why the girl is so pretty like she has a long thin face. (One of these images remind me of Karina. The stan is strong.)
Speaking of nature: 莎 has the radicals for grass, water and small (size) or young. In the Chinese & Japanese dictionary, 莎 is indeed a sedge grass, which is a wetland grass that was used in Ancient times to make raincoats! I like this tidbit a lot because I like rain, (When it’s not flooding, of course), and I love history things.
So focusing on the nature aspect, I asked DALL-E again to interpret the name but with no person.
Absolutely delighted!
It’s like having your own insta-artist. I like how there is focus on the deer. Perhaps I should have asked it to re-interpret in winter?
I started to wonder, what if we try in abstract? So I asked DALL-E to draw the characters again, this time in abstract form:
Might look nice as a phone wallpaper?
And lastly, I asked DALL-E to interpret the characters again, this time as a man.
…And the images did not disappoint!
Well, okay perhaps the disappointing thing here AGAIN is why I am not as handsome as my name is interpreted as.
Perhaps in reality I’m just a bug in one of the antlers.
At any case, I really enjoyed this exercise in art and prompt. I want to write more about how these images are generated but for now, I haven’t even gotten to Lesson 1 yet. Sometimes it’s a miss (I had to crop out the distorted calligraphy.), but it’s also a good practice when I want to be really specific in what I want it (GPT) to look for, in the future. (For other cases).
The next time I go to Hong Kong, maybe I can use my Chinese name now for some souvenir shopping.
More Art and AI dabbling in future posts!
Other References: If with no link.
丽莎
https://wearyourchinesename.com/chinese-names/chinese-names-l/chinese-name-lisa.html
