More on Madelyn's Middle name

Of course, most of the time here in the US, she will probably use the version Melissa posted earlier, “Youmei”. However, I expect that at some point she will probably be interested in exploring more about her Chinese heritage, and we wanted to give her a name that would be pleasing to the ear of a person who speaks Chinese.

In Chinese, it would be written as follows.

優美– Traditional Chinese Characters

优美 – Simplified Chinese Characters

yōu měi – Pinyin Chinese

The meaning of those characters combined would be “Graceful”, “Fine” or “Elegant”

One of the reasons Chinese is a bit confusing to native English speakers is that putting two separate characters together can give them a very different meaning than the two characters separately.

So while the two characters together mean Graceful, the meanings are quite different for each character separately.

優 / 优 / yōu - Means “Excellent” or “Superior”

美/ měi - Means “America” or “Beautiful”

Although it was entirely unintentional, it sure seems like an auspicious sign that one of the characters in Madelyn's middle name can also be translated as "America".