#justlikeyou4

I've been spending more time trying to name this doll than I ever spent naming my actual human children, and Middle Kid had a whole Family Incident involved before she could be named.

Anyway. All I really knew when she got here was that I wanted a Chinese name for her. I started out looking at name meanings and I really liked the meaning of yù, meaning jade, and lán, meaning orchid, but when put together as a name, that means magnolia and I'm active in a group where another active member already has a #4 called Magnolia, and I didn't think we needed two #4s with the same name. So back to the drawing board I went.

I've been on and off searching through Chinese name sites, looking at meanings and sounds and doing *far more research* into Chinese naming traditions than I ever would have expected to do (certainly more than I would have done if I'd gotten this doll at ten years old). I had to rule out most things with q, z, and x because they don't always sound in Chinese the way an English speaker would expect, and for some reason it was important to me that other people would be able to pronounce it correctly, or close to correctly, just by reading it.

So I did what I do and I made a list. I listed all the characters I liked meaning and pronunciation of, I combined them in various ways and checked them against Chinese name websites to make sure they were recognizable as names, and I combined them with various surnames to see what I liked. I came up with eight names.

I was in the kitchen listening to Chinese names over and over on my phone, trying to decide what I liked best, and Middle Kid came in to get a snack (at 1:15am because we are night owls here). She weighed in on every given name and helped me narrow it down to one that we both liked the sound and spelling of, and then I combined it with the surnames I had been considering and we went through the list again.

We finally settled on with Lin Chunlan (林 春兰). I've included the Chinese characters if anyone wants to paste it into a pronunciation tool for a more accurate pronunciation than what I'm bout to type, but it's pronounced lín chūn lán, which sounds something like "leen chuin-lan."

I also got a PC Meet necklace for Molly, shown here in comparison with the reproduction I ordered a week or so before. There's nothing wrong with the repro, just that it's obviously bigger; I'm thinking of asking Middle if she wants it for her Molly.

These two were also in today. They were made in a mission village in China - the seller's note card says they were purchased in 1981 so they're older than I am. The red one is going to a fellow Discord member for her Ivy, and the blue one is for Chunlan. They're about 7.5" tall, a little bigger than the AG small dolls but still a good size for a doll's doll.

And this is just ridiculously cute. I haven't decided yet if the little doll will get a Chinese name or an English one.

Someone in an AG Discord server I'm in shared the link. I had a saved search on Mercari and would have seen the listing next time I checked, but I'm trying to reduce my temptation to overspend by only checking my saved searches every few days and I checked them today. There's a very good chance it would have been gone before I saw it if the other group member hadn't posted!

She'll be my most expensive doll at $223 after shipping, taxes, and fees. But she's the last full size doll I had on my wish list. She looks good in her listing photos and now I'm just really hoping she's in good shape, because I haven't seen a JLY4 under $200 asking price since I started collecting. She does have silver eye and loose legs but I can fix those. Her hair looks good and the description said smoke free home. As long as she doesn't have a severe case of mold or degraded vinyl, I can probably fix what issues she comes with.

And there's a package on my porch

And there's a JLY4 in the package!

She’s here she's here she's here I am so excited. You guys, I could cry, she is so pretty!

One eye is silver and her legs are loose. And she hasn't told me her name yet but I'm sure I'll figure it out by the time I get her all fixed up. More details in another post later - it's about dinnertime now.

(Also Rooster has to inspect the new addition, as always.)