{"id":24400,"date":"2025-12-18T11:59:26","date_gmt":"2025-12-18T11:59:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/?p=24400"},"modified":"2025-12-18T11:59:33","modified_gmt":"2025-12-18T11:59:33","slug":"godfathering","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/?p=24400","title":{"rendered":"Godfathering"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>When I explain to people I meet here that I&#8217;m the <strong>godfather<\/strong> of my friend&#8217;s children, they don&#8217;t seem to understand, even though I do so in Chinese.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"..\/images\/photos\/littlemonsters.jpg\" width=\"640\" height=\"419\" alt=\"\" \/><br \/>\n<em>Me, my friend Malcolm, his mother-in-law and the little monsters (his daughters \/ my god-daughters)<\/em><\/p>\n<p>One person asked me if I was Catholic or Protestant, and seemed to know that being a godfather has something to do with Christianity. I had trouble trying to explain it in Chinese, as I wasn&#8217;t entirely sure what being a godparent involved.<\/p>\n<p>The Chinese translation of godfather I&#8217;ve been using is <strong>\u6559\u7236<\/strong> (ji\u00e0o\u200bf\u00f9), however, few people seem familiar with this term. <strong>\u6559\u7236<\/strong> (ji\u00e0o\u200bf\u00f9) is made up of <strong>\u6559<\/strong> (ji\u00e0o\u200b), which means to teach or class, and <strong>\u7236<\/strong> (f\u00f9), which means father. I think <strong>\u6559<\/strong> in this context might be an abbreviation of <strong>\u6559\u5802<\/strong> (ji\u00e0o\u200bt\u00e1ng &#8211; church, chapel) [<a href=\"https:\/\/www.mdbg.net\/chinese\/dictionary?page=worddict&#038;email=&#038;wdrst=0&#038;wdqb=%E6%95%99%E7%88%B6\">source<\/a>]<\/p>\n<p>Another Chinese translation for <strong>godfather<\/strong> is <strong>\u4ee3\u7236<\/strong> (d\u00e0if\u00f9) or &#8216;substitute father&#8217;.<\/p>\n<p>According to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.thefreedictionary.com\/godfather\">TheFreeDictionary<\/a>, a godfather is:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>A man who sponsors a person at baptism.<\/li>\n<li>One that has a relationship to another person or to something that is the equivalent of being a baptismal sponsor.<\/li>\n<li>The leader of an organized crime family.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>According to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.thefreedictionary.com\/godfather\">Wikipedia<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Within Christianity, a godparent or sponsor is someone who bears witness to a child&#8217;s baptism (christening) and later is willing to help in their catechesis, as well as their lifelong spiritual formation. In both religious and civil views, a godparent tends to be an individual chosen by the parents to take an interest in the child&#8217;s upbringing and personal development, and to offer mentorship.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Apparently you can only be a godparent to one child, and as my god-daughters haven&#8217;t been baptised, I&#8217;m not, in a religious sense, their godfather yet.<\/p>\n<p>When I was young I went to our local (Church of England) church with my parents, and was christened and confirmed there, and went to church-aided schools from 5-16. So technically, I am an Anglican Christian. However, I stopped going to church at the age of 16, and these days, only go to occasional weddings, funerals and Christmas services.<\/p>\n<p>There is apparently a Chinese tradition of matching a child with a relative or family friend, who becomes the \u4e49\u6bcd\/\u4e49\u7236 (y\u00ec\u200bm\u01d4\/y\u00ec\u200bf\u00f9) or &#8216;voluntary mother\/father&#8217;, or the \u5e72\u5988\/\u5e72\u7239 (g\u0101n\u200bm\u0101\/g\u0101n\u200bdi\u0113) or &#8216;dry mother\/father&#8217;. These terms also mean adoptive mother or father, in the sense of traditional adoption, i.e. without legal ramifications. This is a non-religious tradition, usually involving a childless friend or relative, and helps strengthen ties between families.<\/p>\n<p>Alternatively, a family friend might be known as \u53d4\u53d4 (sh\u016b\u200bshu) &#8211; uncle, or \u963f\u59e8 (\u0101\u200by\u00ed) &#8211; aunt. Other words for <a href=\"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/language\/kinship\/mandarin.htm\">uncle and aunt<\/a> are available in Chinese [<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Godparent#Chinese_traditions\">source<\/a>].<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/ling-app.com\/offer-yearly-subscription\/?affiliateId=omniglot\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/images\/banners\/banner_ling-app.jpg\" width=\"640\" height=\"79\" alt=\"Language skills in just 10 minutes a day with Ling\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>To me, being a godparent means that you&#8217;re a good friend of the family, and get on well with their children. I spend quite a bit of time with my god-daughters and their parents, particularly recently as I&#8217;m currently staying with them. The little ones can be monsters at times, and angels at others, but I love them anyway.<\/p>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/pagead2.googlesyndication.com\/pagead\/js\/adsbygoogle.js?client=ca-pub-5001128073855040\"\n     crossorigin=\"anonymous\"><\/script><br \/>\n<!-- Blog horizontal --><br \/>\n<ins class=\"adsbygoogle\"\n     style=\"display:block\"\n     data-ad-client=\"ca-pub-5001128073855040\"\n     data-ad-slot=\"1685480124\"\n     data-ad-format=\"auto\"\n     data-full-width-responsive=\"true\"><\/ins><br \/>\n<script>\n     (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});\n<\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When I explain to people I meet here that I&#8217;m the godfather of my friend&#8217;s children, they don&#8217;t seem to understand, even though I do so in Chinese. Me, my friend Malcolm, his mother-in-law and the little monsters (his daughters \/ my god-daughters) One person asked me if I was Catholic or Protestant, and seemed [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[95,104,10,72],"tags":[416,164,537,538,138,281,522,163],"class_list":["post-24400","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chinese","category-english","category-language","category-translation","tag-chinese","tag-english","tag-godfather","tag-godparents","tag-language","tag-omniglot","tag-translation","tag-words"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24400","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=24400"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24400\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24407,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24400\/revisions\/24407"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=24400"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=24400"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=24400"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}