 | WEST
Used phonetically to express west, but also lends a suggestion of falling sun. |
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 | RESTFUL, EASE, CHEAP
The top part is a building/home; and the bottom, a woman. Represents peaceful normality. Cheap is associated with the idea of no cause for concern. |
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 | TWO
Two extended fingers. |
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 | MAN, HUSBAND
Implies good man & used in male names. |
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| So, to the best of my understanding, it means "Second good man from the restful west." How's that? |
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| Meaning taken from A Guide to Remembering Japanese Characters, by Kenneth G Henshall. |
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Well, like most things, there is a bit of a story here and it happened in two parts.
First, when I was preparing to leave Japan, I was talking with a good friend about returning to America and joining a major online service. (I refuse to name those idiots because, once they grew so big, I could never get on line. AND, in the beginning, their dumb browser used to strip all the formating from pages like this.
I won't tell you who they are, but their initials are AOL!)
I was looking forward to keeping in touch with him by email, but I would need a username. He offered Jiro. He explained it to me and mentioned that he didn't suggest Ichiro because that was his older brother's name. I thought that was cool and have used it since.
Second, Xian is a bit stranger. Basically, I was walking and thinking -- usually a dangerous combination -- when I realized that you could shorten my surname by substituting X for the name of an important holy man. See, it's kinda like X'mas is derived from Christmas. Well, I thought that was pretty cool and so I kept thinking. I then wondered, "Isn't that the name of a city in China?"
So, when I got home that evening, I pulled out the atlas and just about every other book about China and Kanji (Chinese characters used for writing in Japan). I also cruised the web and looked at my online encyclopedia. Sure enough, Xian was an ancient capital of China and is home to the famous army of terra cotta soldiers. Too cool!
That's how it happened. And from that day forward, I have used that as my nom de cyber. Family name first, in the Asian fashion.
