l@m@r_P3UGH

You’ve got to be wondering, “What the heck does he mean by ‘happy horse.. spicy mama’? What a weirdo!”

So, here it is: As part of making me legal here in Taiwan, I have to have a Chinese name that’s used on official documents and stuff. My Chinese name is 樂馬, which is pronounced pretty similarly to the English pronunciation of my name (the Chinese sounds roughly like “Le ma”). Mandarin chinese has tones (4 of them, with a 5th “neutral” tone, Taiwanese has 7, and the crazy Thai’s have to deal with like 13 of them). Each syllable gets it’s own tone, so the same two syllables (such as “le ma”) in a row could potentially have 25 different meanings.

All that to explain: My chinese name literally means “Happy Horse” (Le Ma (4th tone, 3rd tone)), whereas one of the mis-pronunciations of my name means “Spicy Mama” (La Ma (4th tone, 1st tone)). Just about every Chinese person I’ve told my Chinese name has chuckled, if not just outright laughed at my silly name. I guess it probably doesn’t help that I call myself “Spicy Mama” half the time…