Names, Part II: Baby Naming

A student once told me that she had recently visited her friend, who'd just had a baby. Here's the short-short exchange that followed:

Chelsea: 'Oh, how nice!! What's the baby's name?'

Student: [giving me a "duh" look] 'The baby has no name. It's only a few days old.'

Turns out, in China, it's traditional/common for new parents to take their baby to a fortune teller, who reads a child's spiritual stats, and then suggests a few auspicious names for the parents to pick from.

Here's one example-anecdote from a student:

The males in a family all had the character/word hǔ / 虎 in their given names. When a couple in the family had a new son, they took him to a fortune teller, who informed them that their son's metaphysical existence lacked water. So the parents followed his advice to instead name the child hú / 湖, a name with a different meaning, but the same base-syllabic pronunciation, and a character that included the water radical*, 氵.

Another student told me she and her husband were unusual in that they chose their children's names themselves.

My name on a wedding seating chart.

*Complex Chinese characters are usually formed from simpler, basic Chinese characters; when these basic characters are used to form new characters, they are called radicals.   
- For example 好, or "good," is constructed by combining the basic characters 女 "woman/girl" and 子 "child/boy". [The mnemonic is that it's good to have both a daughter and a son.]   
- Several characters change form slightly when they are used as radicals. The character for "water" is 水, but as a radical, it's written as 氵.