When we were deciding on a baby name, we wanted to have a first and middle name that would work in English and Chinese.

Names work differently in China. People don’t have middle names, and the last name is spoken before the first name.

We decided to honor her parents by using their family name (苏)  with a middle name that would start with a “Su” sound  which really narrows down the list of potential names, because whatever names are left have to also be able to break down into sounds of characters, and those characters need to be meaningful.

Sofia was a very good fit, because “fi” (菲)  formerly referred to as Philippine grass, describes the aroma of flowers is fragrant. For the girl’s name is used to describe the beautiful girl’s appearance.

and “ya” (雅) means elegant, decent, beautiful and formal. In the name of the school symbolizes the elegant, honest, generous character. Dignified and elegant

So in Chinese, Sofia would read like this: 苏菲雅 and that is what she will be called in China, as the first name wouldn’t be necessary.

Sophia means “wisdom” in Greek. This was the name of an early, probably mythical, saint who died of grief after her three daughters were martyred during the reign of the emperor Hadrian. Legends about her probably arose as a result of a medieval misunderstanding of the phrase Hagia Sophia “Holy Wisdom”, which is the name of a large basilica in Constantinople.

For her first name, we didn’t have the restriction of starting with a particular sound, so that gave us more options, and we settled on “Nina”, which means “little girl” in spanish and interestingly same in chinese 妮娜 (graceful, delicate and beautiful girl)