my gift exchange for @maddie-oshinein@mdzsgiftexchange 2021 event! sorry for the delay, i was very busy these past few weeks i hope you like it maddie!!
I explain the meanings behind his birth and courtesy names
I’ve briefly covered this in my CQL subs critique, but here’s the full version with some extra analysis
There will be spoilers
Let’s go!
Ok so! We know that Sizhui was once Wen Yuan 温苑, or affectionately, A-Yuan 阿苑. Following his induction into the Gusu Lan clan, he was renamed Lan Yuan 蓝愿. And much later, he was given the courtesy name Lan Sizhui 蓝思追.
Birth name
Let’s start with his birth name first, Wen Yuan. Yuan 苑 loosely means “garden” or “park”. What’s interesting here is his new name, Lan Yuan 蓝愿. The characters 苑 and 愿 are pronounced exactly the same.
However, the meanings are quite different. 愿 means “wish” or “desire”, and in the case of the term 愿意, “willingness”. There’s a heavily wistful connotation to it.
So, why did Lan Wangji rename him as such? Here are some of my theories.
When he took Wen Yuan back to Gusu following the collapse of Burial Mounds, he anticipated a lot of questions and eyebrow-raising. Though Qishan had long fallen, the Wen survivors were still largely regarded with distrust and hatred. Changing Wen Yuan’s name to Lan Yuan was a protective measure to dispel rumors and preserve the child’s safety. If he was assumed to be a long-lost member of the Lan family, people would be more likely to leave him alone.
Lan Wangji chose a character similar in pronunciation as a form of poetic reverence. It was his way of honoring Wen Yuan’s heritage and connection to his birth family, in the allowing of him to hold on to this particular piece of his childhood. What about the character Yuan 愿, in itself?
It was clear that Lan Wangji was grieving at the time of the renaming. 愿 was the expression of his wish to preserve some connection to Wei Wuxian, through this young boy. It represented his willingness to honor Wei Wuxian’s legacy and values, through his determination to raise Wen Yuan to be an outstanding person in his class. And finally, it described his deepest desires — that things could have turned out differently, that he could have convinced Wei Wuxian to trust him and accept his help, and finally, that he could have stood by Wei Wuxian’s side at the end.
Moving on to Lan Sizhui 蓝思追, his courtesy name. The name Sizhui 思追 loosely means “chasing memories”, with an implication of deep yearning for something in the past.
Here, it represents Lan Wangji’s remembrance of Wei Wuxian.
This name also represents something specific and intensely personal to Sizhui himself — namely, his hidden identity and his lost ties. To begin with, it served as a starting point for him to realize that he was different from the other Lan disciples. It provided the impetus for him to look into his past memories, and in doing so, to discover and embrace who he once used to be.
Lan Wangji did not erase Sizhui’s heritage by renaming him. In fact, through his choice of characters, he made a deliberate yet subtle move to strengthen Sizhui’s connection to the past, and to the long-dead people of the Wen clan who had once loved and protected him.
As a point of interest, there is a fanmade poem that makes use of Sizhui’s courtesy name. It reads:
思君不可追，念君何时归？问灵十三载，等一不归人。
“I think of you, but I cannot follow. I miss you, when will you return? I’ve inquired of the spirits for thirteen years. I wait for a person who will never return.” (tl by me)
In this case, 君 is an archaic and classical way of referring to a beloved “you” or “other”. We see this reflected in other famous poems. An example is Li Ziyi’s 李子仪 poem 《卜算子》，只愿君心似我心 “I only wish for your heart to be like mine.”
@yllzsexc “flower shop au where lwj is the florist and wwx is the supplier who lwj gets his flowers from. wwx and his son a-yuan deliver the flowers to lwj’s shop every morning in their matching overalls and cute little van. wwx lets a-yuan pick a flower for pretty gege every morning which he then very carefully tucks behind lwj’s ear.”
Back at it again with my Wei Wuxian whacking ways for the MDZS Reverse Big Bang 2022!!
Much love and thanks to my amazing author partner @stillwanderingflame for her wonderful fic, A bridge in the dark (14.5k, E). Please go check out this sweet (and spicy!) Burial Mounds AU on AO3!
