why my name has an extra n

October 13th, 2021

It's not often you see the name Evann, and it's even rarer to see a guy with that name. So why does my name have 2 Ns in it?

In China, it is traditional to give siblings a common character in their names. So for example, my dad's name is 毋渔家 and his sister's name is 毋性家. They both share the character 家.

When my oldest sister was born, two character names were trendy and my parents gave her the name 毋泶. When the rest of my siblings were born, my parents continued to give each of us two character names and decided that instead of a common character across our Chinese names, they would have our English names all start with the letter E and have 5 letters.

This rule started off being easy to follow as they named my siblings Emily, Elice, and Ethan. However, when they got to me, they couldn't think of a name they liked better than Evan, so they stuck on an extra N to keep with the rule.

And that's why my name is spelled with an extra N.