Hi everyone! Hope you all have been well! I realized I’ve not written much about choosing an auspicious name so I thought I’d write a bit on it, especially when I’ve been been getting quite a number of requests for Chinese name selection lately. The client whose house I audited recently referred one of her colleagues to me for choosing a name for his newborn son.
I chose the name 林威辰。
The Principles Behind Auspicious Name Selection
There are certain principles to follow in name selection – the general ones being it must, of course, sound pleasant, hold deep meaning and a name both child and parent can be proud of. From a metaphysics perspective, we’ll have to be a bit more rigorous and go into the individual strokes. Most people have three character names (三字格), although some might go for two characters or even four especially for Japanese people. The way of calculating the strokes don’t differ much regardless of how many characters are there – the key is to get the number of strokes and structure of the name right.
When practitioners like myself choose a name, we first look at the bazi chart of the child and determine what elements are required to enhance the chart or to remedy the flaws. The first part of the whole process is the most complicated one because it’s very easy to analyze a chart incorrectly. Most of my clients would think that if a chart is missing a particular element, they just have to choose a name that enhances that particular element – this is a huge mistake in bazi analysis. Blindly throwing in an element which isn’t in the chart doesn’t make it a good chart. If I were to use my own chart as an example: my chart lacks Water, but introducing Water to it is going to make my chart structure collapse and the flaws even more salient. The structure (格局), flow and interaction (中和) and adjusting for environmental conditions (調侯) must be assessed.
What The Five Structures In Auspicious Name Selection Are
Once we know what the chart lacks, we can proceed with the name selection. There are 6 different criteria to look at, which is the 五格 (5 Structures) and 三才 which represents the relationship between Heaven, Earth and human (天地人)。This term first came from the I-Ching (易經) which is said to be the source of Chinese thought and culture. The 五格 is represented by: 天格，地格，人格，外格 and 總格 – each of them representing a particular period and aspect of a person’s life, whereas 三才 I would say refers to how one’s environment can support him or her. To get all 6 criteria right is extremely difficult, especially when the surname and chart is fixed. All these while taking into account that the name must still sound pleasing to the ear.
To give a gist of how this is done, we first look at the 五格 and plot out the number of strokes required for each structure. They must have an auspicious number of strokes and there will be 5 sets of strokes to look into. Take special note the strokes must be based on the 康熙字典。Some words may have more strokes than they appear. For example the word 王 appears to have four strokes, but it actually counts as 5, so it’s a good habit to always check it against the 康熙字典 and not just any ordinary dictionary. Next, after we’ve chosen a name, we check the 三才 to see if there is any cause of concern. The 三才 will be expressed with the 5 Elements, so the name I chose for my client has a 水金土 structure which is one of the best structures to have, and the icing on the cake is that the baby’s chart needs these three elements as well.
To summarize, the three steps to take are:
1) Accurate analysis of one’s 八字 and identifying the beneficial elements (喜神)
2) Choosing a name that has an auspicious number of strokes that fit into the 5 Structures (天格，地格，人格，外格 and 總格)
3) Identifying the elements that make up the 三才 structure and assessing the clashes between the elements and whether it complements the 八字 chart
If all these three criteria can be performed correctly, there will be no doubt that the child will get a huge boost along his or her journey in life.
I shared in an earlier post that I’ve been given a horrendous name, and I really did went to change it. I was wondering if the timing of changing my name coincided with the upturn in my 八字’s 大運, because there is reason to believe the name one has been given is fated during birth is interlinked with one’s fate somehow, just like how people with good 八字 charts naturally end up in good houses, and if we could alter and change it right from the start, why not?
Name selection for newborn babies can be said to be the most taxing service I provide due to all the considerations and criteria in choosing a good name, but it’s also one of the most fulfilling ones because how it instills hope in the parents that their child will grow up to have a good life in future. It’s quite an honour to be choosing a name for someone, and I sincerely wish all the children who were named by me will be healthy and happy always. I’d also like to thank my clients for their support and trust in me.
Before I end this post, I’d just like to share a few thoughts and words of appreciation. I first got in touch with metaphysics when I was 18 and I’ve been doing this professionally for a little over 2 years now and it has been an amazing ride with a lot of support from clients. I’ve been conducting this service via this very simply designed website of mine which I’ve always wanted to make more aesthetically pleasing. Of the 500+ BaZi reading’s I’ve done, it’s amazing to know that they are all done via email. And as for the feng shui reports, they are done more like essays with a few snapshots of what to look out for. I am grateful because my clients have been able to see the effort I put in and they let me know that they appreciate it. My reports and the way I conduct this may not be as polished with nice graphics and charts like the other practitioners who are doing it full time, but it is always done with heart and rigour to make sure I don’t make mistakes and that my clients walk away knowing they went to the right consultant. I make it a point to let my clients know a bit about the history, theory and motivation for our ancestors’ development of metaphysics.
This is something I’ve mentioned right from the start and I’ll say it again – I will probably always do this as my sideline and not full-time, because if this starts to feel like something I have to generate sales for my livelihood, I think everyone will agree with me that it will start to give me unnecessary stress, create a moral hazard and turn this into something that I don’t want it to be. Perhaps one day when this sideline of mine absolutely lifts all my financial worries, I will consider it doing full time and see how I can better serve people, but that’s really a long shot. I’m really seeing where the wind will take me for this.
Thanks for tuning in everyone! It’s June already and I hope 2017 has been great for everyone!
-Sean
Update: I met the baby I named! You can see pictures of him in the post here.
