Saturday 11 August 2007

Shane or Mwangi or Snowie or Xue-Shan?

Some people have asked me what it is about my names:

SHANE: that is what my family called me when I was born - but later on, they changed it to Peter-Shane however I dropped Peter way back in 1999 and since then, I was Shane. There are still people who refers to me as Peter-Shane. Shane is an Irish name, the Northern version of the name Sean.

MWANGI: that is what Shiku have chosen for me - it is my Kikuyu name. It means a tall guy with fat cheeks but it also means an European - that's what she have said! We are thinking of calling our kid Mwangi or Mwathi - but we will decide once we get him! To East Africans, I refer to myself as Shane Mwangi. When writing articles etc, I usually sign off as Shane Mwangi rather than using my full name (which is complicated for many East Africans)

SNOWIE: because I love white jeans and white tracksuits, Gary my mate in Wolverhampton called me Snowie - but I think it was because I used to fancy that really fit guy called Snowy whose house Gary and I viewed in Tooting (South London) as we were going to rent. I was obsessed with him - and Gary started to call me Snow Snow. Some people thought I have called myself after Tintin's dog Snowy (!) and my "nephews" in Derby were so concerned I called myself after their cat Snowy!!!

XUE SHAN: It was Jia Jia's fault - Jia is my mate in Shanghai. Junhui Yang my mate in Preston told me that I can call myself SHAN using the Chinese character for mountain/hill (which is EASY to write) and then when Jia Jia and I first talked on MSN, he saw my name SNOWIE and then the Chinese character 'SHAN', he called me Snow Mountain since then :-)

It doesn't matter which name you call me - I ll answer to them all!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Uncle Shane you have blown your chance if u ever want to escape from ireland most wanted man list! :P

Shane Gilchrist said...

Thanks Chris W - if Ireland's most wanted man is fit and PHOOOARRRR, well, why not?

:p