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Eaglet’s Chinese name has surprisingly a complicated history. Their records use two spellings: 冰璇 and 冰旋, both read as Bīngxuán in Mandarin.* Given they are both acceptable as personal names,** one can see how the former with its uncommon character (which was intended by their namers***) got typo’d as the latter (which is on the official IDs). Lemme blow those up a bit:
璇 ≠ 旋
If you omit the skinny 王 from the left side of the former, you get the latter, which changes “fine jade” and a highfalutin’ name for 𝛽 Ursae Majoris into “revolve/loop around/return.” The 冰 in both cases means “ice.” We have sometimes joked that somewhere along the way, someone mistook an icy star (冰璇) for a comet (冰旋).
Anyway, for official purposes, we spell it 冰旋 as per official papers, but prefer 冰璇, which feels more accurate to their personality.
Though out loud among family, we usually use Bīngbing (when not using $Englishname).
* Pronounced roughly /beeng-shüen/, with a high-steady pitch and then start-middle-and-rise pitch. That the part rendered as -a- in pinyin comes out closer to /eh/ than /ah/ used to trip me up, but if you get the /ü/ correct that part mostly autocorrects.
** The former comes across to native speakers I’ve talked with as refined in a literary way and the latter as somewhat common.
*** One of whom told us some of this history.
---L.
Subject quote from Bright Ideas, Greg Laswell.
璇 ≠ 旋
If you omit the skinny 王 from the left side of the former, you get the latter, which changes “fine jade” and a highfalutin’ name for 𝛽 Ursae Majoris into “revolve/loop around/return.” The 冰 in both cases means “ice.” We have sometimes joked that somewhere along the way, someone mistook an icy star (冰璇) for a comet (冰旋).
Anyway, for official purposes, we spell it 冰旋 as per official papers, but prefer 冰璇, which feels more accurate to their personality.
Though out loud among family, we usually use Bīngbing (when not using $Englishname).
* Pronounced roughly /beeng-shüen/, with a high-steady pitch and then start-middle-and-rise pitch. That the part rendered as -a- in pinyin comes out closer to /eh/ than /ah/ used to trip me up, but if you get the /ü/ correct that part mostly autocorrects.
** The former comes across to native speakers I’ve talked with as refined in a literary way and the latter as somewhat common.
*** One of whom told us some of this history.
---L.
Subject quote from Bright Ideas, Greg Laswell.
