Fu Die, or Fudie, or Fu Tieh, or Fu-dieh, or what ?

David's been trying to figure out what her middle name is going to be. Or, more precisely, how to spell it so that the average Joe Canadian gets it sort of right. The way it was translated on her dossier ("Fu Die") lends itself to being pronounced it like the English word "die", which is a little odd to have in your name. We certainly started saying it that way when we first read it, so likely everyone else will too. The way it's really pronounced in Mandarin is actually closer to "dieh", or maybe even "tieh", or maybe a combination of the two ("dtieh").

阳 = yáng (listen here)

福 = fú (listen here)

蝶 = dié (listen here)

David even consulted his Taiwanese friend from work who speaks Mandarin, who in turn consulted her mother and a phonetic dictionary. Listen here to how she says it. The phonetic dictionary she consulted actually translates 蝶 as "tieh", compared to the "die" in Pinyin. [Aside : for those unfamiliar with Pinyin, it's a standardized way of "romanizing" Chinese characters, ie translating them into the Latin alphabet. It's sort of phonetic but not really.]

Anyway, I'm sure you're less interested in the process and more with the conclusion ... after much discussion, we decided that we will make her middle name "Fu-dieh". Jaime Fu-dieh. Sounds kind of nice :)