Quest for inner peace forces fashion designer to become a Buddhist nun

Ting Tien, 24, was a fashion designer with access to the best of clothes and make-up. But being disillusioned with the lifestyle she and her friends were leading she decided to give up all her material comforts to join the Buddhist Order.

Her quest for inner peace made her do something that's not really expected of girls her age.

Ting, a native of Jinan City in Eastern China, attended the Qingdao University in Shandong Province, specialising in luxury goods design.

But after her graduation, she found everything around her increasingly materialistic and too much to handle.

Yearning for enlightenment and inner peace, Ting made a very unusual choice for most Chinese girls her age - she joined Xinlongdongzhi Temple, a remote Buddhist place of worship located on a snow-covered mountain, at 13,000 feet above sea level, in Sichuan Province.

She shaved her head, shed her designer outfits and adopted the simple life of a Buddhist nun, filled with sacrifice and prayer.

To complete the transformation, Ting even changed her name to Caizhenwangmu, and set finding spiritual fulfilment as her ultimate goal in life.

Ting's story gained a lot of attention after photos of her before and after the dramatic change were posted online. She became an instant hit across China, where most people live their lives in the pursuit of materialistic goals and successful careers.

When asked about why she decided to give up her promising career to live isolated in a Buddhist temple, Ting's reply was simple: "I just feel the need to gain an understanding of life and death, and what it's all about," she said.

"I'm also eager to do what I can to make the world a better place for all living creatures. What's more, believing in the Buddha makes me a nun."

What is in a name? But it is different in Iceland

If you are born in Iceland you won't be able to have the name you are using at present. In Iceland generally a baby's name is not revealed until its official naming ceremony (often accompanied by a baptism).

Legally, parents have up to six months to name their baby and it's not uncommon for a child to be 'nameless' for this period of time (of course the parents may know the name, but it's kept a secret from everyone else).

So, what do you call a baby with no name?

Up until the naming ceremony babies are often referred to as drengur (boy), stúlka (girl), elskan (an affectionate term like 'honey' or 'sweetheart'), or Gunnarsson/Gunnarsdóttir (depending on if it is a girl or a boy, according to the Old Norse naming system).

The worst of it all is that baby names in Iceland must be chosen from an official list issued by the Mannanafnanefnd, or personal name committee. If Icelandic parents want to use a name that is not on the list, they must submit a petition to the committee, along with a small fee, and wait to hear if the name is accepted or rejected. (Exceptions to the naming law are made for foreign-born parents.)

Recently the official Board of Human Names turned down requests for registering Malm and Adil as new Icelandic male names, Mosi, Svea, Eybjort and Korka were accepted.

According to Icelandic law regarding human names, given names have to fit Icelandic rrammer rules and be spelled in an "Icelandic way" unless the name had belonged to the family of the child for generations.

Iceland recently denied 10-year-old Harriet Cardew's passport renewal request because her name doesn't comply with Icelandic baby naming laws. Her name doesn't appear on the approved list of 1,853 female and 1,712 boy names.

Icelandic laws state that unless both parents are foreign, they must submit their name choice to the National Registry for approval within six months of birth.

The name must fulfil requirements that include "Icelandic grammatical endings," "linguistic structure of Iceland" and "Icelandic orthography."

Lilja and Belinda, two of the couple's four children, have their names on their passports because they were born in France.

However, Harriet and her brother Duncan, 12, were born in Iceland, but did not have their names approved by the committee.

They live in Reykjavik, Iceland, and up until this point, have been going by "Girl" and "Boy" on their passports.

But upon getting Harriet's passport request, the government went a step further and denied her an updated passport completely, which could put her family's upcoming trip to France on hold.

So Tristan and his wife, Kristin, appealed.

"They have deprived our daughter of freedom of movement," Kristin said.

Baby name "bans" might sound crazy in a country where they're unheard of, but governments all over the world set naming guidelines. Baby-naming site, Nameberry, reports that countries like Germany and Italy have their own rules - in Germany, surnames as first names like "Anderson" aren't allowed; In Italy, names that could embarrass a child are questioned.

"In fact, some of these are not long-standing strictures, but relatively recent ones," wrote Nameberry's co-founder and naming expert Linda Rosenkrantz.

The Cardews could bypass the name block by changing Harriet's middle name to an Icelandic one, but the family thinks it's too late. Instead, they applied for an emergency passport from the British Embassy where dad Tristan is from.

He finds the name approval process absurd. "The whole situation is really rather silly," he said.