Our Chinese Names

Here are our Chinese names in Chinese characters, Taiwanese, and Pin-Yin (the official mainland Chinese transcription to the Latin alphabet based on Mandarin pronunciation), along with character by character translations, connotations, under- and overtones.

Mogens: 蒙恩士

Taiwanese: Bông Un-Sū
Pin-Yin: Méng En-Shì

• 蒙 means covered in.
• 恩 means blessing or grace.
• 士 means gentleman.

Thus, 蒙恩士 means a gentleman covered in grace and blessing. My mother-in-law was very pleased with herself when she found (or constructed) this transcription of my Danish first name, Mogens (which is a perversion of Magnus, which in turn is Latin for big).

In Chinese tradition the family name is mentioned first, so we use 蒙 as our Chinese family name even if it is derived from my given name.

Kristian Ki-Un: 蒙基恩

Taiwanese: Bông Ki-Un
Pin-Yin: Méng Ji-En

• 蒙 means covered in.
• 基 is the first character in Christ, 基督.
• 恩 means blessing or grace.

Thus, Ki-Un or 基恩 means the blessing and grace of Christ while 蒙基恩 means covered in the blessing and grace of Christ.

Justine Jîn-Bín: 蒙仁憫

Taiwanese: Bông Jîn-Bín
Pin-Yin: Méng Rén-Mǐn

• 蒙 means covered in.
• 仁 means kindness and mercy.
• 憫 means sympathy and mercy. 憫 is the last character of Justine’s maternal great-grandmother’s name, 洪隨憫. We hope that Jîn-Bín, 仁憫, will have the same simple yet strong faith in God as her great-grandmother who died three-and-a-half months after Justine was born.

Thus, 蒙仁憫 means covered in kindness, sympathy, and mercy.

Nikolaj Î-Hok: 蒙怡福

Taiwanese: Bông Î-Hok
Pin-Yin: Méng Í-Fú

• 蒙 means covered in.
• 怡 means contented and satisfied. In both Taiwanese and Mandarin, 怡 is pronounced the same way as 儀 which means inherited, so with a play of words, 怡 means inherited contentment. Moreover, 怡 is composed of two characters, 心 which means heart and 台 which is the first character of Taiwan, 台灣 (台 is to Taiwan what Scot is to Scotland, Scotish, Scotsman, etc.).
• 福 means blessing and good fortune. 福 is the last character of Nikolaj’s maternal great-grandfather’s name, 黃老福. We hope that Î-Hok, 怡福, will be blessed with the gift of stewardship as his great-grandfather who died a year before Nikolaj was born. We also hope that Nikolaj will be blessed with the contentment of his paternal great-grandfather Andreas Nikolaj Madsen Taagholt.

Thus, 蒙怡福 means covered in inherited contentment and good fortune with his heart in Taiwan.

If the Chinese characters on the page display as little boxes, your computer doesn’t have Chinese fonts installed. If the Chinese characters (and a few of the accented letters) display as X798F; (or something like it), your old browser does not handle hexadecimal character references.

This page was last revised on November 12th, 2003.