the transliteration of Eve

(on Facebook recently)

Sapphirelinger:

Just now learned how to write "Eve" in Chinese. They transliterate it which means they just choose characters for the similarity in sound rather than properly translate it. The characters they chose were "summer" and "baby" or in other words Eve was a "Summer Babe". This is too funny.

Aunt J:

I always suspected this of Eve, actually.

Gramma:

I am sure ONE man in the world thought so!!! Imagine what Adam must have thought the first time he saw that 'perfect' woman in front of him!!! A never before seen 'creature' - presented to him by the Creator of the universe, his 'good friend' and 'doctor' - proclaimed by that ONE - as WIFE!!!!! HIS WIFE!!!!! HIS COMPANION FOR LIFE!!!!
Marriage is wonderful and God given!!!!

Sapphireslinger:

Anybody who really knows Chinese, feel free to weigh in on this too.

Sapphireslinger:

The romanization for Eve's name is "Xia Wa" or "Hsia Wa" depending on which system you use, (that's Shyah Wah for Americans). If this same "wa" is repeated twice it becomes the word for "doll". So was Eve also a "Summer Doll"?

Sapphireslinger:

Meanwhile don't quote me in any church bulletins :)

Gramma:

Um, gets better by each comment you make!! And the climate in the garden would definitely fit the name AND the picture!!!

Sapphireslinger:

The transliteration "Xia Wa" may not sound like "Eve" but I'm guessing they were trying to match the sounds of the original Hebrew, not the English. After all, the Chinese "Ye Su" (yeh-soo) sounds a lot more like the Hebrew "Yeshua" than the English "Jesus".

Sapphireslinger:

I never realized until now why the Chinese word for Jesus was "Ye Su".

Gramma:

The Cherokee word for Jesus sounds so much like the Chinese, but then the American Indian IS Asian in ancestry! That is interesting!

Gramma:

Remember singing in Cherokee when Granddad preached for the church there?

Sapphireslinger:

It was all Greek to me.

Sapphireslinger:

If the Chinese and the Cherokee were both trying to approximate the Hebrew sounds at translation time then those words would all be similar.

Gramma:

Yes, but beautiful 'Greek' - those words were very phonetically poetic!

Sapphireslinger:

And don't we often put an English "J" for Hebrew "Y"s and vice versa? Like Jehovah for Yahweh and Jesus for Yeshua. So if you discount the J-Y mix-up, they would be more similar than at first glance?

Sapphireslinger:

Something else to consider about the name Xia Wa: in my experience when somebody comes to that name who is reading that story for the first time, they often go, "Xia Wa ... oh that's just like Nu Wa the first woman." So they have their own story of the first woman passed down from when they split off from Noah, and the names are similar.

Sapphireslinger:

But don't ask me what the story is, or what the Chinese characters are for Nu Wa. I do hope somebody knowledgeable chimes in. Ask Joyce.

Sapphireslinger:

At least I think it's Nu Wa. Getting increasingly fuzzy here.

Joyce:

wow.. 夏娃

Sapphireslinger:

夏 is summer and consists of these two pictographs: 1. 頁 (which now means a page (in a book) but originally meant a person walking because it is itself made up of two pictographs abbreviated - 首 meaning head and 儿 being 2 legs) and 2. This second pictograph I can't find to copy and paste but it means to walk slowly. In other words the word for summer is represented by a person walking slowly (because of the heat is how I remembered it) or it could be sauntering to enjoy a beautiful summer day.

Sapphireslinger:

娃 (Wa or wah) is baby and consists of two pictographs: 1. 女 meaning woman and 2. 圭 which is two 土 (earth/dust) pictographs stacked on top of each other and originally meaning feudal lands but the dictionary says 圭 is used mostly for the phonics of it, which I couldn't understand at first because 圭 is "gui" but then I saw many other words with 圭 in them are also pronounced "wa". So if you think about it the word for baby is represented by a woman with a "Waaaah!" beside her.

Gramma:

I think you are wrong on this statement:

'So they have their own story of the first woman passed down from when they split off from Noah, and the names are similar.'

They had the same language when they split from Noah. It wasn't until the tower of Babylon that their language changed. Remember? However, after that, there may have been similarities in the different languages as they expressed the words for Adam and Eve.

However, if that is what you meant, you were right.

Sapphireslinger:

You're absolutely right. I should have said Tower of Babel.

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Footnotes:

These are only some of the comments.

I took two words out of the comments to redact a name.

If you want to friend me after reading this, I'm sort of trying to keep Facebook for people I've actually met face-to-face, because I'm more likely to let my mouth run away with me if I can delude myself that only my relatives will notice. If it's any good, I'll gladly post it here on Sapphireslinger.

It also works the other way around. If an article is born full-fledged I'll post it here right away and merely use Facebook to alert people.