Xiǎo (Little 小) Mò (Desert → [Indifferent] 漠) ← Tap/click to show/hide the “flashcard”
I highly, highly enjoyed the character-driven dramatizations in the Saturday sessions of this year’s convention that featured Neeta the Neat Freak and Jade the Jaded Young Person. (They start at about the 19:46 mark of the video for the first Saturday session.) I found them especially well-written, well-acted, etc., resulting in them being very believable, insightful, funny, and moving.
In the corresponding Mandarin videos, Jade is named “Xiǎo (Little 小) Mò (Desert → [Indifferent] 漠)”. (You can hear this starting at about the 21:40 mark of this video.)
“Xiǎo (Little 小) Mò (Desert → [Indifferent] 漠)”
“Xiǎo (Little 小) Mò (Desert → [Indifferent] 漠)” obviously does not sound like “Jade”, so as with “Ānnà (Anna 安娜)” (a previous MEotW) for “Neeta”, “Xiǎo (Little 小) Mò (Desert → [Indifferent] 漠)” was instead chosen for the meaning it suggests in Mandarin, similarly to how in English, “Neeta” suggests “neat” and “Jade” suggests “jaded”.
The “Xiǎo (small; little; petty; minor [→ [young | concubine | I; my; our]] 小)” in “Xiǎo (Little 小) Mò (Desert → [Indifferent] 漠)” means “Little”, and is often used in Mandarin nicknames or pet names. A pet name is defined as “a name that is used instead of someone’s usual first name to express fondness or familiarity”, but sometimes in Mandarin “Xiǎo (small; little; petty; minor [→ [young | concubine | I; my; our]] 小)” is placed in front of someone’s real first name to form a nickname or pet name, kind of like how “John” was the real first name of Robin Hood’s friend Little John. (Well, it was at least as real a first name as a legendary figure can have 😄. Speaking of which, in the Mandarin convention dramatizations, Xiǎo (Little 小) Mò (Desert → [Indifferent] 漠) only seems to have been called “Xiǎo (Little 小) Mò (Desert → [Indifferent] 漠)”, so it’s hard to say if “Mò (Desert → [Indifferent] 漠)” was a “real” name of that character, or if it was a made-up nickname.)
One difference between “Xiǎo (Little 小) Mò (Desert → [Indifferent] 漠)” and “Little John” though is that while “Little John” was an ironic nickname for a man who was supposedly actually unusually tall, “Xiǎo (Little 小) Mò (Desert → [Indifferent] 漠)” is used to refer to someone who actually is relatively little—Eastern cultures overall seem less into irony than some Western cultures are. Interestingly, speaking of littleness, the English word “diminutive”, which usually means “unusually small”, can also have a meaning similar to “nickname” or “pet name”.
The “Mò (Desert → [Indifferent] 漠)” in “Xiǎo (Little 小) Mò (Desert → [Indifferent] 漠)” has a basic meaning of “desert”—it’s the “mò (desert [→ [[is] aloof; cold; indifferent; unconcerned; detached]] 漠)” in “shāmò (shā·mò sand · desert → [desert] 沙漠)”. As Xiǎo (Little 小) Mò (Desert → [Indifferent] 漠) herself explains, it’s also the “mò (desert [→ [[is] aloof; cold; indifferent; unconcerned; detached]] 漠)” in “lěngmò (lěng·mò {[is] cold} · {[is a] desert → [[is] aloof; cold; indifferent; unconcerned; detached]} 冷漠)”.
“Lěngmò (Lěng·mò {[is] cold} · {[is a] desert → [[is] aloof; cold; indifferent; unconcerned; detached]} 冷漠) de (’s 的) ‘mò (desert [→ [[is] aloof; cold; indifferent; unconcerned; detached]] 漠)’ ”
Why would “lěngmò (lěng·mò {[is] cold} · {[is a] desert → [[is] aloof; cold; indifferent; unconcerned; detached]} 冷漠)” associate “cold” with “desert”? Deserts actually don’t have to be hot, like the Sahara Desert is. Deserts can also be cold overall, as is the Gobi Desert that covers parts of northern China. What makes a desert a desert is that it is very dry.
With “desert” as its basic meaning, “mò (desert [→ [[is] aloof; cold; indifferent; unconcerned; detached]] 漠)” can also mean “aloof; cold; indifferent; unconcerned; detached”. Interestingly, in harmony with deserts being dry, Xiǎo (Little 小) Mò (Desert → [Indifferent] 漠) exhibits what Westerners would call a dry sense of humour.
In several meaningful ways then, “Xiǎo (Little 小) Mò (Desert → [Indifferent] 漠)” is a very fitting Mandarin name for Jade the Jaded Young Person. The team that translated these dramatizations into Mandarin certainly did a good, thoughtful job!