Traditional Chinese Titles and the Perils of Being Promoted

so today i was about to start writing a letter to my cousins and while prepping the letter in my head, it once again occurred to me how confusing traditional chinese titles are.

after writing to my mother's older brother's son giving him a lengthy update on the family - Por Por's condition, Yee Ma's latest idiosyncracy, etc, I might very well get a reply from him some weeks later along the lines of "So how is Ma Ma now? When is Gu Zeh coming to visit?"... are we still talking about the same people or what??

i suppose the preciseness of these chinese titles were meant to make the relationship to each person very clear once upon a time. but being over precise also means that within one family, one person can have up to as many titles as there are people in his family! what I call my mother's second oldest sister is different from what my cousin calls her even though she's just one person! that sounds more like a sure path to confusion rather than clarity to me!

i guess if someone else was writing this they would probably be able to give funnier examples of possible mix-ups, but unfortunately i don't know the titles well enough to be intentionally funny, and therein lies part of the problem...

perhaps in the past people were so clear about all the different titles that they never got confused. but nowadays most of us only learn the titles by rote without really remembering what relationship it stands for. and most people, like my brother, use these titles only once a year at Chinese New Year and have to whisper frantically just outside the door "What do we call her again???" [ok lah my brother's a little bit better than that. he remembers to ask in the car just as we're parking.]

these explicit titles may also have been more necessary in the past when families were bigger. i guess this confusion will end and the titles will die as more and more families shrink anyway. will we miss them then?

i'm glad that at least both sides of my family are Cantonese! it takes a braver soul than me to battle chinese titles in multiple dialects!! If I were a guy, I would also fervently hope that I do not belong to the dialect group where 'Uncle' is 'Gu Gu'!

for those who have no idea what i'm talking about because everyone is just Uncle X or Aunty Y to you, try this - http://www.mandarintools.com/family.html

having just been promoted to aunty-dom, i face a new dilemma. it's not about what my nephew should call me, my mother worked out my title long ago. it's more of whether i -want- to be called by it. or rather, by them. since eventually, what my brother's children call me will be different from what my sister's children call me.

so if i stick with the chinese titles, my nephews and nieces might mix up their 'Gu Zeh' and 'Yee Ma', but if I don't, then they might mix me up with all the million and one 'Aunty Amy's that pop up in their lives eventually... or we cld compromise and they cld use my chinese name and call me Aunty Ching which wld at least be slightly more unique and is how my UK-born and bred cousins address my mum's generation anyway.

but heck about confusion. the more important (albeit more superficial) question is... which sounds better??? i'm actually not very keen on being called 'Gu Zeh' simply because i find the words grating. whereas 'Yee Ma' is quite alright. so maybe i will still make my brother's children call me one thing - 'Aunty Amy/Ching' and let my sister's children call me Yee Ma. [actually hang on, i'm not even sure if they'll call me Yee Ma because that's what I call my mum's sisters but she only has older sisters, whereas I'm younger than my sister, so....... argggggggh.]

i wonder if this is why my 'San Yee Ma' has always signed off on cards as 'Aunty -', maybe it was a subtle hint that she'd rather not have her traditional title used! well, i guess if i do decide on the same thing, i will have to give Ethan a not so subtle hint, such as stuffing his mouth with a sock :D

so anyway I have until Ethan learns to talk to decide [which might unfortunately happen pretty soon since he keeps trying to talk although his vocab at the moment seems to be limited to something like 'Baaa. Baaa.' and i'm pretty sure he's not calling me. i'm not a black sheep. i hope]