“What did you give me this paper for?” Wu Ruo received the paper, feeling suspicious; a long string of names with the surname Hei were written on it: “Hei Shaofeng, Hei Tianzong, Hei Yangyan, Hei Aozhi, Hei Jinyu…”
As he kept reading them aloud, he roughly understood what Hei Xuanyi was trying to do, he looked at Hei Xuanyi, surprised, and said: “These are all names you thought of for the child?”
Hei Xuanyi nonchalantly made an ‘hn’ sound.
Wu Ruo asked: “Do you like children a lot?”
Hei Xuanyi frowned: “No.”
Other than his own child.
“…” Wu Ruo felt that he didn’t seem like he didn’t like children: “The names you thought of are all not bad, it’s hard to choose. But how come all the names use the surname Hei? There aren’t any that follow my surname Wu?”
Hei Xuanyi squinted at him doubtfully: “Follow your husband1This phrase here is the same phrase as the chapter title, 出嫁从夫 (chu jia cong fu). This is a phrase that originally comes from a longer adage, which generally referred to women back in Ye Olde Times in China: “Before you get married, you must listen to your father. After you get married, you must listen to your husband. After your husband dies, you must listen to your son.”.”
So the child had to follow the husband’s surname.
Follow my husband, my ass2你的头 (ni de tou): means ‘your head’, but I don’t think it translates well directly so I opted for the English equivalent. It’s essentially an expression of disdain/disagreement, functioning the same way as when you say “my ass!” at something. Does anyone prefer ‘your head!’ instead? I’d love to hear your opinions.! The corners of Wu Ruo’s mouth twitched a little, then he closed his eyes and raised his hand, using his hand to rub at the paper. At this, he smeared one of the names.
He opened his eyes and said: “Let’s go with this name.”
“…” Hei Xuanyi took the paper back and looked at it: “Hei Haoqiong, hn, let’s go with this name.”
“I heard that newborn children must have a pet name so that they’ll be easier to care for.” Wu Ruo felt that since Hei Xuanyi had chosen the child’s formal name, then it was only fair if he chose the child’s pet name: “The child’s pet name will be Pig Egg.”3Okay, so over here I’d just like to talk about the terms used in (a lot) more detail. Back in the day, Chinese people had a lot of names. Like, one person gets a couple of names through their lifetime. Over here, Wu Ruo mentions 乳名 (ru ming) which refers to a pet name, and it translates more literally to ‘milk name’.
For various reasons, Chinese people used to give their babies a pet name based on either the conception dream or something you would name a pet. What is a conception dream, you ask? It refers to the dream family members, or the pregnant woman herself, sometimes have about the child before they find out about the pregnancy. It’s unscientific, but people believed that they’d receive dreams foretelling the conception of a child, hence the conception dream. The literal translation for this is “fetus dream”.
Why give the child a name that you might give a pet? Well, Chinese people also believed that if the God of Death knew the child’s formal name, then they would be able to take the child’s soul A.K.A the kid dies. Apparently, if the God of Death doesn’t know a person’s formal name, they can’t take ’em to hell LOL Probably due to high infant mortality rates way back when, this was done in an effort to prevent the God of Death from snatching young, helpless babies’ lives.
If you gave them a common nickname that an animal might have, they might take the animal instead of the baby. Another term for pet name/nickname is 小名 (xiao ming) which literally translates as ‘little name’. It’s just another term to refer to a child’s nickname. The reasons aren’t 100% foolproof, I didn’t do much historical research or anything, but a quick browse came up with these.
There might be other reasons as well, and maybe these aren’t real historical reasons, but just popular modern interpretations. If anyone knows for sure, feel free to let me know and I’ll edit this footnote.
The term 大名 (da ming) refers to a child’s formal name, the official/legal name they go by. All of the character names we see in the story are all their da ming, and there’s more about the difference between 名 (ming) and 字 (zi), which will crop up later on. We’ll… cross that bridge when we get to it. It’s pretty complicated too, but the main idea here is that Hei Xuanyi gets to choose their child’s legal name, so Wu Ruo wants to choose the name that everybody will actually be using.
Actually, he was just suggesting this pet name to piss Hei Xuanyi off on purpose.
“…” Hei Xuanyi immediately ignored this pet name of his, shoving the piece of paper under his pillow and closing his eyes to sleep.
Wu Ruo saw that he wasn’t responding, so he turned his body around and asked: “How’s this pet name?”
It was as if Hei Xuanyi was sleeping, there was no response.
“Hey, what do you think?” Wu Ruo used his hand to nudge Hei Xuanyi’s arm: “Say something.”
Hei Xuanyi still didn’t move at all.
“Hei Xuanyi.” Wu Ruo huffed as he jabbed Hei Xuanyi’s waist. Suddenly, his wrist was grabbed.
He was stunned for a moment, then he said irritatedly: “Since you aren’t asleep, couldn’t you just say something?”
Hei Xuanyi didn’t open his eyes and didn’t say anything, and moreover, he didn’t let go.
Wu Ruo wanted to pull his hand back, but what could he do when the other person was especially strong. No matter how, he couldn’t pull away: “Hei Xuanyi, let go of me, I want to go to sleep.”
Hei Xuanyi slowly opened both his eyes and said plainly: “The nickname. Dandan4Just a quick(er) explanation, Pig Egg is 猪蛋 (zhu dan) in Chinese, I translated it in the earlier paragraph for context (as to why Hei Xuanyi would ignore the name Wu Ruo suggested). Hei Xuanyi is suggesting here that the nickname be 蛋蛋 (dan dan) instead, which would probably translate to something like “eggy”. It’s just the word ‘egg’ repeated twice, which is something that gives off a cutesy/affectionate vibe (when a word is repeated twice in a nickname).
Essentially, Hei Xuanyi is compromising with Wu Ruo’s suggestion even though I think he absolutely hates the idea of calling their baby “Pig Egg” in any shape or form..”
He could still reluctantly accept this pet name. As for Pig Egg, Dog Egg, or whatever, he didn’t want to hear it a second time.
Although Hei Xuanyi’s tone didn’t seem to have any fluctuations, it still didn’t give Wu Ruo any leeway to rebut him: “Alright, then Dandan it is, just let go of me.”
Hei Xuanyi didn’t move, he was still holding onto Wu Ruo’s wrist.
Wu Ruo rolled his eyes: “I’ve already followed my husband, what else do you want?”
The corners of Hei Xuanyi’s lips quirked up slightly, and he let go of Wu Ruo.
Wu Ruo was so annoyed that he used his foot to kick Hei Xuanyi’s leg, then he turned around to sleep, ignoring Hei Xuanyi.
Hei Xuanyi also closed his eyes again.
Even before dawn broke the following day, both of them heard the sounds of rapid knocking on the door, and Hei Xin’s anxious voice: “Master, Madam, something’s happened, please come quickly and take a look at the little young master!”
When Hei Xuanyi heard this, he immediately opened his eyes and got up. He only pulled on an outer cloak before walking out.
Wu Ruo blearily woke up from his dreams: “What’s going on?”
Not long after, Shi Yuan entered to help him get dressed.
Wu Ruo hurriedly asked: “Just now, I think I heard Hei Xin’s voice. What exactly happened?”
According to his understanding, if there wasn’t any important matter, Hei Xin normally wouldn’t come knocking on their door.
“This…” Shi Yuan hesitated for a moment: “Madam, I think it’s still better for you to go and take a look for yourself.”
Wu Ruo saw from his expression that it didn’t seem like a big deal, so he relaxed a little bit. When he walked out of the inner room, he saw Hei Xuanyi staring at a two-year-old little baby in his arms.
Notes: my health has been getting worse lately, and I think the quality of my translations aren’t as good as I would like them to be. Because of this, I’ve decided to cut down update frequency to (tentatively) twice a week for now before we hit chapter 60. Hopefully this pace will be more manageable for me, and the translations can be of a decent quality. Updates will be Mondays and Thursdays instead, thanks to everyone who reads and supports my translations!
