Chapter 2: watching the paint dry

In the middle of the night
I go walking in my sleep
Through the jungle of the doubt
Cross a river so deep

I've been search for something
Something so undefined
It could only be seen
By the eyes of the blind
In the middle of the night -- modified from Billy Joel's "River of dreams"

Studying names from different countries is something fascinated David after leaving his home country. One other person, fascinated by names from different nations, is his good friend and colleague at ENS, Alex Volnov. Alex is from a Russian city called, Krasnodar which means "gift from the reds", on the shore of the Black Sea. Without meeting Alex, the name of such a not-so-prominent city would have probably never entered David's mind, just like David's tiny small hometown, Guiyang, would have not enter the memory of Alex. People joked about the city of Guiyang, saying it means "sunshine is very expensive", or "male are over priced", but its official meaning is just a town south of a mountain named "expensive". Besides that, David also learned an interesting aspect about translation, or meaning lost in translation. The country name of China is "Kitai" in Russian. But "Kitai" 契丹is actually a tribe once considered an invader to China and the tribe eventually disappeared after the more powerful nation of Mongols swept through the Eurasia continent. A fairly popular Chinese novel for David's generation "Eight Gods in the heaven" (天龙八部) featured a hero 萧峰, meaning a "Chilly Summit" who was loyal and devoted to China but was slander as a spy from the "Kitai" nation. David amused "if he only had his passport printed in Russian, all the suspicions and misunderstandings by his Chinese friends and followers would have gone away".

David and Alex both felt humbled by the fact that countries in this world not only include those prominent densely populated metropolitans, but each smaller cities, towns and villages also possess its individuality, rich history, its good name with significances and interesting stories. Many interesting stories were happening all the time in small corners of the world, and the world is changing fast. Two foreigners showed up in the streets of Guiyang in the 1970's, a circle would have quickly formed by children looking at these exotic human beings that appear totally different from themselves and their parents. But 30 years later, since the streets were often visited by tourists from all over the world, children would only glance at those tourists curiously from a distance and adults would just walk by paying little attention.

Alex and David started studying names of people with different nationalities because Alex wanted to translate his name differently from how it appeared on his passport. Alex Volnov wanted to bid on some contracts online as a moonlighting software developer to get some extra cash, living in one of the most expensive cities of Canada. While his name Alex Volnov did not attract many interests at first, after changing his name to Alex Wave -- the English translation of Volnov, quickly helped him get some attentions and inquiries. With his 10 plus years of computer skills in different areas, he quickly landed several small programming contracts. Then he discussed with David about his plans to form a small software company with the name "Wave Software Development". David was very enthusiastic in discussing names with Alex, and found their interests in studying people's names are sources of interesting imaginations and creative ideas. The topic became more and more worthwhile for discussions when they meet.

They both believed that a name, which a person would carry for quite sometime if not an entire lifetime, would inevitably affect a person's personality somewhat -- negatively or positively -- and possibly mold someone into a certain type of person. They started asking people "what's the meaning of your name in your own language?" At the beginning, they get some answers, such as "Shahabi" means shooting star in Arabic, or "Smith" and "Baker" mean types of "craftsman" or "chef who bakes bread". Then there would encounter some other people found them annoying, by saying: "My last name is Brown, it's just a name, what else does Brown means". David and Alex were undeterred and would start listing what the word "Brown" would remind them of in English. Throwing away the negative association of the word, they listed: "Brown is a color of course", "Cleveland Browns remind people an image of a dog", "Brown sometimes remind other peoples named Brown, such as John Brown", "The color Brown reminds people of season changes, such as 'all the leaves are brown and the sky is grey'", "Brown could be somebody from Poland changed his or her name from Brownkolsky to Brown". . .