aww well that's sweet
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oh great question! peak matthew was apparently 1980-1990 which checks out, the matts i met were all in their 30s i think. no idea why. sometimes these things correlate w/ a popular TV / movie character or actor but i have no guesses who it might've been
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my name, meanwhile, is almost totally unique; the only other qiaochu i've ever met was, bizarrely enough, also a qiaochu yuan and also a math grad student at UC berkeley; she works at facebook now and i periodically get recruitment emails intended for her
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Two stupid questions. Do you have your surname listed first or last?
And is the first name a unisex name? It's it very rare?
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I've deduced that Yuan is your last name because that seems quite common. Still have the second question.
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it's pretty rare afaict, i actually have no idea whether it's unisex or not. it's possible the other qiaochu uses different characters, i never checked
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Hello from Southeast Asia!
As someone currently studying Chinese names (as a hobby), and with a Chinese name that 3 other classmates in high school shared as well, here’s a small contribution:
There are many Chinese characters that have the same English transliteration.
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Qiao can be 桥，巧，翘，侨，敲
Chu can be 出，处，初，除，触
And so on.
Generally there are “feminine” characters chosen for girls’ names and more “masculine” characters for boys’ names.
An example would be 桥 (bridge) for a guy and 巧 (graceful) for a girl.
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Choosing names is an art that some feng shui masters have perfected in order to balance one’s elements in one’s natal charts.
If one has too much fire, wood & earth in their charts at birth, then words containing elements of water & metal would be employed.
But I digress.
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aha hmm. the characters in my name are 翘楚, does that help?
Hello! I've consulted 2 people more learned in the Chinese language than me, but I see you've already read some stuff about your name.
楚 is traditionally a character associated with a girl
but 翘楚 seems a little unisex because of the first character
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learning some things about my name 
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Which your friend has already pointed out. Haha. But thanks for asking. I think I need to brush up on my Chinese seeing that I'm trying to figure out the best feng shui names for stuff.
Hope you're alright after getting mildly hit by a car. Take care.
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Replying to @QiaochuYuan
Whatever the etymology sad to inform you that 翘楚 is not gendered nowadays which means it gets used more on men
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Right, so I'm not sure that speaking of Chinese first "names"as a cohesive thing is very helpful. They are some combination of characters. They may or may not be meaningful as a prepackage
"
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Yes that is very true!
In addition, it's impt to note that in certain traditions, one might have a book of names to choose from. Making it more arbitrary.
Still, names are special and I think most parents take great care to choose one for their kids.
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