Hawaii - James Michener [291]
The Whipples got another shock when they asked what the chubby, healthy little boy was to be called. "We haven't been told yet," Mun Ki replied.
"How's that?" Whipple asked.
Mun Ki said something about not yet having taken the poem to the store to find out what the child's name would be. Dr. Whipple started to ask, "What poem?" but he felt he'd better not, and said no more about the name, but some days later Mun Ki asked Mrs. Whipple if he and his wife could be absent for a few hours, and when Amanda asked why, he explained: "We must take the poem to the store to find out what the baby's name is." Mrs. Whipple called her husband and said, "You were right, John. The Kees are taking a poem to the store so as to get a name for their baby."
"I'd like to see this," Dr. Whipple said, for such things were of concern to him, and Mun Ki said he would be honored to have such a distinguished man assisting at the naming of his first son, but before they started to the store Whipple asked, "Could I see the poem?" And from the precious genealogical book Mun Ki produced a card containing the poem from which all names in the great Kee family were derived. It was an expensive, marbled, parchment-like cardboard bearing in bold poetic script fourteen Chinese characters arranged vertically in two columns. "What is it?" Whipple asked, his scientific curiosity aroused, but Mun Ki could not explain.
The Chinese store to which the trio headed stood at the corner of Nuuanu and Merchant streets and was known simply as the Punti store, for here that language was spoken and certain delicacies favored by the Punti were kept in stock. The storekeeper, an important man in Honolulu, recognized Dr. Whipple as a fellow tradesman and ceremoniously offered him a chair. "What's this poem my cook is talking about?" Whipple asked, whereupon the Punti said, "Not speak me. Him. Him."
And he pointed to a scholar who maintained a rude office in the corner of the store, where he wrote letters in Chinese and English for his Punti clients. Gravely the letter-writer picked up the poem and said, "This belongs to the Kee family. From it they get their names."
"What's it say?"
"That's not important. This one happens to read: 'Spring pervades the continents; earth's blessings arrive at your door. The heavens increase another year; and man acquires more age.' "
"What's it got to do with 'names?" Whipple asked.
"The answer is very complicated, and very Chinese," the scholar replied. "But we are very proud of our system. It is probably the sanest in the world."
"Can you explain it?" Whipple asked, leaning forward in his chair.
"In China we have only a few family names. In my area less than a hundred. All one syllable. All easy to remember. Lum, Chung, Yip, Wong. But we have no given names like Tom or Bob."
"No names?" Whipple asked.
"None at all. What we do is take the family name, Kee, and add to it two ordinary words. They can be anything, but taken together they must mean something. Suppose my father were a Kee and believed that I would be the beginning of a long line of scholars. He might name me Kee Chun Fei, Kee Spring Glorious. That's the kind of name we seek for your cook s boy."
"Where does the poem come in?" Whipple pressed.
"From the poem we receive the mandatory second name. All men in the first generation had to be named Chun, Spring, from the first word in the poem. All their offspring in the second generation had to be named Mun, Pervades. And all in the third generation, like the boy we are considering today, must be named from the third word in the poem, Chow, Continent. There is no escaping this rule and the benefit is this. If your cook Kee Mun Ki meets a stranger named Kee Mun Tong, they know instantly that they are of the same generation and are probably cousins."
"Sounds