What’s in a name? Emma Ling Sidnam considers the meaning behind the words that make her uniquely her.

The Sunday Essay is made possible thanks to the support of Creative New Zealand

Original illustration by Bonnie Wong.

I only know one Chinese character, 林, and it’s tattooed on my ribs. The 林 is inked in calligraphy, caught between delicate leaves on a curving stem. Last summer I wore a purple bikini top when I lay on the beach, face upturned to the sun . The leaves stuck out like daisies growing through cracks in the pavement.

Ribs are a painful place to be tattooed. Each stroke felt like a knife being carved in my skin. It helped that Rose and I talked the whole half hour. Rose Hu was the only tattoo artist with Chinese heritage that I could find in Wellington. We were behind a Japanese screen in Buttercat, a little studio off Cuba Street. She had bleached blonde hair, tattoos all the way up her arms, a wide smile. I liked her instantly.

As I lay tensely on my side, Rose inked 林 and leaves on me and we talked about being Chinese New Zealanders. We talked about making art for a living and whether that’s something sustainable. We talked about how tattoos are our stories written on our skin.

. . .

I got my first tattoo when I was 18 and dazzled by the freedom of moving to a new city. I walked through the dappled light of new streets and felt dizzy. Life opened to me and my body began to breathe deeper. It was ready to  transform.

Despite that, I was cautious. Determined to regret nothing, I spent months scanning and saving tattoo designs on my phone. In the end I chose a daisy on my ankle. I wanted it placed in a way that made it appear to be sprouting from my shoe. Sometimes I look at that daisy and feel content. It reminds me of simplicity.

In many ways, the daisy is my idealist childhood self. My whole life I’ve drawn a five petalled flower after writing my name. It started with my first bedroom. Mum chose my duvet and curtain set: green with pink and white daisies. Each flower was a pink paint swirl with five white petal swirls.

. . .

In the last hundred years, Emma has consistently ranked as one of the most popular names in England, Wales, Australia, the United States of America, and New Zealand. Emma was the number one baby name in New Zealand from 2003 to 2005. When I think about how common my name is, I reassure myself that it’s not as common as Hannah. There were 11 Hannahs in my year level, five in my tutor class alone.

When I was eight, I decided I preferred the name Emily. I thought it was rarer, more mysterious. Where Emma was a boring summer’s day, Emily was the long rays of sun on an autumn evening. At school, I announced that I was now Emily. The only person who respected my wishes was the librarian.

Names stick, like tattoos.

林 means forest, but it’s also the last name Lin, of which Ling is a version.

林 is my mother’s maiden name and my middle name.

In Fuzhou, China there is a 林 / Ling family village which I have visited once.

As the bus pulled up on the mountainous road, the village rose, surrounded by neat fields of vegetables and grains I couldn’t identify. Even now, my imagination conjures strange green plants with asymmetrical leaves, little yellow flowers like faces. The streets are easier to recall. Neat rows of houses with brown tiled roofs. Gutters lining the roads. Streets paved with flat stone.

Driving to the village meant winding through long mountainous roads shrouded in mist. I couldn’t see anything out the windows. The world was blotted out by a damp blankness. Everything was wiped clean and there was something terrifying about that. Nausea bled up my throat and pressure filled my ears. Several people vomited into paper bags.

When we arrived in the 林 / Ling village, our bus stopped outside a little temple. It was a square, brick structure with concrete pillars and an elaborate roof with curved edges. Red lanterns hung from the edges, spun in the wind. We were directed to enter, but not all at once. When it was my turn, I went in, breathing the musty air. The inside was shadowy, lit only by the light entering the carved windows, a few candles which wavered as if about to flicker out. It was small, barely enough room for ten people. Most people walked in, nodded to the wooden Buddha at the front, then left. A few people lingered by Buddha. I wondered if they were praying.

We left the temple and arrived at an open air restaurant. “Open air restaurant” is misleading. In New Zealand that means sleek tables, fairy lights, little fires. In the 林 / Ling village it meant plastic chairs, round tables, insect repelling candles. We were greeted with smiling faces and firecrackers exploding in the evening air.

. . .

When my adopted great-grandfather arrived in Aotearoa New Zealand, his English name was Sidnam Kwok. Chinese people write their last names first. In New Zealand, Sidnam Kwok became Kwok Sidnam.

Google doesn’t recognise Sidnam as a last name. It tries to autocorrect it. Microsoft Word underlines it in bitter red dots. Sometime in English history there was a Sidnam family. They have a crest complete with grey rams. On my first laptop, Natasha, I saved a picture of Emma Sidnam’s gravestone. She was an African American woman. I recently tried to research her life, but I couldn’t even find the picture.

I am currently the only living Emma Sidnam in the world. It’s a good fact. People are surprised when I tell them. Sometimes they don’t believe me. Once, a close friend didn’t believe me, and I got unreasonably frustrated. In retrospect, her disbelief made sense. There are nearly eight billion people in the world after all.

I’m basing my statement on internet searches and Facebook profiles. Perhaps it’s more correct to say I’m the only Emma Sidnam I can find.

. . .

The visit to the 林 / Ling village was part of a 10-day trip in China. A trip I still tell people about because it’s such an unlikely story. Like my name, it could easily have never happened.

When Ngie Ma (grandmother on my mother’s side, pronounced nyeah-mah) fled China for Malaysia, her family left a baby sister behind.

Like that, an axe was swung through my family. One family became two.

/

That baby sister grew up and had her own family. One that I never knew.

In 2015, her son-in-law sent a letter all the way to Aotearoa. He explained that his father-in-law was turning 90, his mother-in-law was turning 80. They wanted the entire family, from far and wide, to be there. The son-in-law would personally pay for everyone’s travel expenses and accommodation. It was an offer from a movie.

The 10-day trip was on the same week as my year 13 camp, which was the Tongariro Crossing. I considered skipping China and going to Tongariro because I was a teenager with a fear of missing out. It seemed likely that missing camp would equate to missing bonding experiences I’d never catch up on.

In the end, I chose to go to China. That choice meant I met 96 new relatives, relatives I hadn’t seen before and haven’t seen since. That choice meant I got a tiny view into a country, a world I might have known but didn’t.

I never met my grandfather, the one with the last name 林 / Ling. He was dead before I was born. Mum told me he was the antithesis of my Ngie Ma. Where she was shy and fastidious, he was confident, funny. He owned a little shop which took him away from his family for long periods of time. He used to get drunk and write poetry.

When he met Ngie Ma, shortly before their arranged marriage, he sang songs to woo her. He was taken aback by her beauty whereas she had to grow to love his heart. These tiny details are all I have to hold onto. Yet they’re enough to make me feel close to him. Maybe I got my poetry from him, passed down through blood. Sometimes I get drunk and write poetry and think of him. It makes me feel close to him, close to my roots. If he hadn’t been my grandfather, maybe I wouldn’t write at all.

I love the way Mum talks about Ngie Ma. Her voice goes soft, warm, gently reverent and longingly nostalgic. Ngie Ma doesn’t just mean grandma in Foochow, it specifically means grandma on the mother’s side. Ah Ma means grandma on the father’s side. Ngie Ma was one of the gentlest, most generous people. She served herself last, even if that meant going hungry. She did everything slowly, perfectly. She used to say: I can’t do many things, but what I do, I do well.

As the only girl, my mum was the only one who didn’t pass on the 林 / Ling last name. The fact that it is my middle name is special, even though it didn’t mean much to me as a child. Anna-Maria, my mum’s Swedish friend, always calls me Emma-Ling. She thinks it sounds gorgeous. I think it sounds like a make-up brand. But, as I’ve begun to embrace my roots, I’ve realised how much I love it.

. . .

In the future, new tattoos may carry less meaning than the ones I have now. Now, I have a daisy, a moon, 林 / Ling, a magnolia, a cross. Everything entwined with leaves. My crescent moon represents loving someone far away. My sister. My brother. The cross is a reminder of the love of God. The magnolia is the tree in my Tāmaki Makaurau garden, the one that Mum stood underneath every spring. Magnolias are hope. The beautiful knowledge that the early morning cold eventually melts to a pale spring sun. The knowledge that everything is temporary.

I don’t know what my body will look like in 50 years. But I know that my ink will be of nature. Trees, bushes, flowers, oceans, forests – these are the only eternal things and I want them on my body. Even as my skin sheds itself and my tattoos fade and sag, the stories remain the same. A leaf from Portugal. A stem from Japan. A bouquet for the birth of my first child. When my body is burned or buried, I want to return to the earth. I want my body to be a garden when I die.

. . .

I like the randomness of the name Sidnam. I like that it’s a name we almost missed. It’s a name that I can’t specifically anchor to anyone, or anywhere. Sidnam sounds English, has history in the United States, yet remains only in New Zealand.

Sidnam is a name rooted in its history of misnaming, misaiming. And in that way it’s a perfect metaphor for someone like me. Because one could say that people like me are cultural misses. My ethnicity and ancestry and name belong to countries I’m foreign to. My identity is tied to a country that historically failed to welcome people who look like me. In a way, I’m a stranger everywhere. And yet I have my name.

Emma 林 / Ling Sidnam.

That name brings me home.