Those of us with Chinese names may have been told certain characters of that name were chosen because we lacked one of the five elements (water, wood, fire, earth and metal) in our astrological chart, based on the time, day, month and year of our birth. And that those characters have been responsible for our identity.
There are a few systems classifying characters into elements. For instance, Chinese characters consist of radicals that represent certain themes. Water characters will have the two or three strokes representing water on the left. Fire characters will have the fire radical, wood characters the wood radical, metal characters the metal or gold radical and earth characters the earth radical. Another commonly used system classifies the elements of the characters according to strokes: wood characters consist of one, two, 11 or 12 strokes, fire characters three, four, 13 or 14 strokes, earth characters five, six, 15 or 16 strokes, metal characters seven, eight, 17 or 18 strokes and earth characters nine, 10, 19 or 20 strokes. As the stroke-number classification was devised in ancient China, it will only apply to traditional characters predominantly used in Hong Kong and Taiwan, rather than the simplified characters used on the mainland and Singapore. Those living in countries using simplified characters may have to choose names according to the classical system and write the simplified versions on documents.
This is the last edition of Fung Shui. For further reading, please refer to Feng Shui: A Hong Kong Perspective, a compendium of Jin Peh's Post Magazine columns, available at good bookshops.
