Dr Michael Moreton was President of MSS in 61-62 . In
1997 he went to China for two years and stayed for ten .
PICKING A NAME
I spent my early days in the delivery business in a down-town hospital , the Liverpool Maternity Hospital , now closed . We delivered the baby , made sure that the baby was breathing , cut the cord and then looked down south and said “ It ’ s a boy ” or “ It ’ s a girl ” Before the introduction of ultrasound this was the moment that the gender was first known . Then we would ask , “ So what is baby ’ s name ?” and the mother would inform us of her choice . In some cases , however , the mother did not have a name chosen . Perhaps it was her eighth baby and sixth son and by this time she had run out of ideas . “ What ’ s your name , Doctor ?” they would ask . “ Michael ” I ’ d say and many times that would be chosen as the baby ’ s name . In the layered society of Britain at that time , Michael was a very cross-cultural name , favored by all layers of society and the mothers in our hospital were very comfortable with it . When my friends Nigel or Jeremy would announce their names , there would be a short awkward silence and then mother would say , “ I ’ ll think I ’ ll go with Fred ”
I always liked my name and handing it around like this always seemed harmless . I was not so sure about the occasional Michelle and Michaela . When I was in practice in Canada I had many Chinese patients , mostly Cantonese speaking from Hong Kong . When the baby was born they would give the baby the western name and then phone HK with the details of the time of birth so that the grandparents could consult the fortune teller and get a lucky Chinese name for the baby . It was a good system , everybody was happy . For the western name , the Hong Kongers loved the old British Victorian names : Winston , Charles , Cedric , Jennifer , Heather and Caroline . Names with a little weight .
Later when I moved to China this naming took on a whole new dimension . At that time China was opening up and many young Chinese were taking western names . There were several reasons for this . In a country of over a billion people there are not that many surnames , 25 % of the people are named either Li , Wang or Zhang . That ’ s 100 million of each and given names are in equally small supply . I met three Li Pings during my first week in China .