So while I was in Việt Nam, I found out (and I don’t remember how) that when I came home from that hospital over thirty-odd years ago… originally my “given name” or rather “first name” was my Vietnamese Name (which is now my “middle name”).

Say what?

Without revealing my entire name… right now it looks like this:

Whileas when I was borne it was originally this:

Interesting. Mind you my mother was having this conversation about names in the car with various other relatives and the question of changing names came up and she mentioned that if you need to make a name change you just go to city hall. When asked more about it she told them that she did it for me when I was a baby. (I may not speak Vietnamese, but I definitely understand it… don’t I make a good spy? :D)

When I asked her about it, she mentioned that she did it within a year after I born to make it easier for me to live and survive in the United States. Makes sense… Now I am wondering how much would my life have changed if my name was different… and trust me, we may not place a lot of emphasis on names… but a direct change like that does change a person’s outlook on life.

Out of curiosity one day I decided to look into the meaning of my (names) and this was what I was able to discover:

So what is the meaning of my name? Well… let’s look at Kabalarians for the hell of it:
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