As Ramy lectured Robin on the flaws of Jonathan Scott's Arabian Nights translation, Robin felt like he could cry. He'd been so desperately lonely, and had only now realized it, and now he wasn't, and this felt so good he didn't know what to do with himself.

And then the question came. A question no one had ever asked Robin in all his years in Britain. "So is Robin your real name? Did you walk around Canton named after a European bird? Do they have robins in China?"

Robin was at a loss for words at first. When he found his bearings, he answered the questions in reverse order. "There are no robins in China, at least none in Canton. I only knew about them from the books I grew up reading. When I lived in Canton, I had a Chinese name… the one my mother gave me. After she died, Professor Lovel came to get me. He told me I needed a name English people can pronounce, so I picked one out."

Ramy laughed, less naturally than he had a moment ago. "You could have chosen any English name in the world, and you picked 'Robin Swift?'"

"I wasn't given much time to decide."

There was a moment of silence between the two boys. The first one to be had since they'd introduced themselves to one another. Then Ramy shuffled closer and asked. "So what was your name before that? The one your mother gave you."

Robin frowned. "Do you want it in Cantonese or Mandarin?"

Ramy shrugged. "I don't know. The way your mother said it to you, I guess."

His mother had used both during Robin's childhood. When they spoke to locals in Canton, she had used the Cantonese pronunciation. Within the household, among family members, she had said his name the Mandarin way. Robin hadn't realized there was a difference, or that this was unusual, until he had introduced himself the Mandarin way in the fish market. The name's characters never changed; only the way a person put sound to them did.

In this context, it may have made more sense to give Ramy the Cantonese way. But then Robin remembered Professor Lovell's derision of Cantonese, how Mandarin was the only form of Cantonese that mattered because it was the one spoken in the Qing court. Beyond Professor Lovell's opinion, the Mandarin way was more intimate for Robin, and there was no one he had felt closer to since coming to Britain than the Indian boy sitting next to him for the first time that night.

"...It's pronounced yín hè. It means 'silver crane,'" Robin offered at the conclusion of his deliberations. "If you mess up the pronunciation a little bit, you get yín hé, the Mandarin name for the Milky Way Galaxy, so be careful using it."

"Wait: you're named after a bird in both languages?" Ramy asked, then laughed. "I was spot on calling you Birdie, wasn't I?"

"I guess so," Robin agreed. It hadn't been intentional on his part, but he liked the connection Ramy made. It made his English name and Chinese name feel less separated from one another. They were the same person after all, not a dividing line between where a Cantonese boy ended and a (future, then current) Babel student began.

"And silver, huh? What was your mom thinking, naming you after silver?"

"I don't know." Even as a young boy, he'd known his name was an odd one. Yín doubled as a name for currency or money. When shopkeepers heard him introduce himself, they laughed and teased him about being rich. Robin knew his family had once been wealthy, but they certainly hadn't died that way. Had his mother been thinking back to better times when she gave him his name?

"Maybe she knew what you would grow up to do. She knew you would attend Babel and do lots of silverworking." Ramy's voice sounded like he was teasing, but the words themselves gave the impression of something more serious. The mood was shifting beneath his tone, and Robin didn't know where the transition would lead. "And the homophone with our galaxy. There's no way a native speaker wouldn't know she did that. She didn't just think the world of you, Birdie. You were the whole galaxy to her!"

Robin choked on the emotion he felt just then. His eyes stung with the fresh arrival of tears. "I… hadn't thought about my mother in a long time."

Ramy went silent at that. "I'm sorry, Birdie. You must miss her a lot."

"Every day," he whispered. "Even when I don't know that I do, I do. I feel how she isn't there in my life. Even though I had Mrs. Piper, and she was always nice to me, it wasn't the same." Now the tears streaked down his face, forming their own twin rivers. "And I don't use the name she gave me. Ever since I left Canton, I've never used the name she gave me, the name she put so much thought and love into. I don't use my family name either. I'm named after Gulliver's Travels. A man I've never met."

Ramy didn't speak right away. He left Robin cry first. Only then did it occur to Robin how embarrassing this situation was, him crying to the first boy his age he'd met in years. If Ramy kicked him out of his room then and there, Robin wouldn't have blamed him.

But Ramy didn't shoo him away. Instead, he offered his advice. "I know how you feel, sort of. I can't go by Ramiz in London either. And trust me, Ramiz is a lot easier to pronounce than your name is.

"If we want to study at Babel, we have to fit through the hoops these British people want us to jump through. Fitting into their society means leaving pieces of ourselves tucked away. Not behind, mind you. You don't need to throw who you are away just because the English people don't understand it. We just… don't share it with them because they won't appreciate it.

"And for what it's worth, my name means 'one who communicates well' in Arabic. Even British people who know about India tend not to notice because they try to attach my name to a Hindu language." Ramy laughed again. Not as good natured as before, but a way to break tension all the same. "So we were both marked for Babel at birth. Isn't that something, Birdie?"

Robin nodded, not trusting himself to speak. He hadn't started his studies yet, and so he lacked the words needed to describe how he felt in that moment. Gratitude wasn't a strong enough term for it, though the feeling was certainly present. It was like the laughter and fun that had begun their conversation had a second dimension soldered onto it in that moment. Where the first dimension brought camaraderie, this dimension offered commiseration. The sense that they both had pieces of themselves too foreign for anyone else to appreciate.

He wondered if that feeling would disappear once they met other Babel students. Surely there were more foreigners like them on the campus?

When studies began, he got his answer. Yes, there were other foreign students studying with, above, and below them. Some, unlike Robin, had even kept their names unaltered. Yet no one, not even the other foreign students, questioned Robin's name as Ramy had. Either they understood why Robin had changed his name, or it never occurred to them he had a different one to begin with. They looked at his lighter hair and paler complexion and came to the same suspicion Robin had long harbored himself. The same suspicion, but a different conclusion.

Ramy never tried to say Robin's Chinese name. Because no one else ever asked, Robin never told them either. Yín hè sat in the back of his mind like a book gathering dust. A neglected tome he never thought back to reading again. The only time he'd ever opened it in Britain had been to show Ramy one of the pages.

Yet a book untouched was not untreasured. It was only a book separated from its destined time and place.

A/N's: Behold, the second ever fanfic on this site for Babel! Congratulations to he first person to post one and thank you for getting the category created on FFN.

While I did study Mandarin in high school, I'm not a native speaker by any means. I asked one of my friends (who is a native speaker) about the name I chose for Robin before including it, and she said it's alright to use, though she could tell it was a fictional character and not a real person. So not exactly a large sample size, but a vote of confidence nonetheless. If anyone wants the characters, they are as follows: 银鹤。 Not to be confused with 银河， the Milky Way Galaxy.

I'm sure R. F. Kuang had her reasons for never including Robin's Chinese name, but I spent the whole book wondering if she would ever bring it up. Maybe in an enpowering moment for Robin to reclaim his connection to his motherland. I don't know. I'm open to y'all's interpretations in the review box if you would like to provide some. This is a minor critique of an otherwise INCREDIBLE book, obviously. I read it on the plane and struggled not to cry and the end because I finished right as we were landing and I didn't want to explain to the people I was traveling with what my tears were for.

I doubt my little fic lives up to the source material, but if you're here, thanks for reading it anyway! I hope you enjoyed.