how to name your kids... the asian way.

While outside on recess duty today, a little girl introduced herself to me. I have been in Asia long enough to know that kids' names can be interesting from time to time. I had a boy named Rock, in Korea, and now a  girl named 'Tree', in Taiwan. I said, "Tree?", and the little girl pointed to a near by tree. I thought "right...". She said there was one difference between her name and the tree she was pointing at and that was, HER name was spelled with a capital letter 'T'... to which I replied "of course it is, because that's your name!" (I could have gotten into a whole lesson about proper nouns at this point, but held back! It was recess after all).

Although my intrigue began in Korea with 'Rock', this incident has made me wonder how on earth do parents come up with names for their kids in this part of the world? I am going to go ahead and say, some parents must have their child, look out a window and name it after the first inanimate object that they see. There is just no other explanation (of the logical sort), in my opinion!