>鹅 = goose
鹅 can refer to quite a few birds in Chinese[0], and in this case, since the article noted:
Vancouver city council candidate Jean Swanson’s (金玉鹅) [has a] beautifully phonetic and semantic rendering of her name
鹅 is probably referring to 天鹅 ("swan")[1], which is part of Swanson's family name.
A bit of an explainer: In names, a word that's usually two characters long is often truncated. For example, the name of the kirin (麒麟) is often used in names, but is often truncated to 麟 (麒 is also possible) so that another character (e.g. a verb) can be introduced, e.g. Alan Tam's given name[2], 詠麟, means to rhapsodise about the kirin.
>Usually the more chars resembling wealth in your name, the less educated family you may be from.
Swanson's an anti-poverty activist,[3] so perhaps that may explain something about why 金玉 might have been appealing as a reference to 金玉滿堂.
Her party "has traditionally been associated with tenants, environmentalists, and the labour movement"[4], so I imagine that perhaps she wanted something green in the name as well, and jade (玉) fits the bill.
[0] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E9%B5%9D#Chinese
[1] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E5%A4%A9%E9%B5%9D#Chinese
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Tam
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Swanson
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coalition_of_Progressive_Elect...
鹅 can refer to quite a few birds in Chinese[0], and in this case, since the article noted:
Vancouver city council candidate Jean Swanson’s (金玉鹅) [has a] beautifully phonetic and semantic rendering of her name
鹅 is probably referring to 天鹅 ("swan")[1], which is part of Swanson's family name.
A bit of an explainer: In names, a word that's usually two characters long is often truncated. For example, the name of the kirin (麒麟) is often used in names, but is often truncated to 麟 (麒 is also possible) so that another character (e.g. a verb) can be introduced, e.g. Alan Tam's given name[2], 詠麟, means to rhapsodise about the kirin.
>Usually the more chars resembling wealth in your name, the less educated family you may be from.
Swanson's an anti-poverty activist,[3] so perhaps that may explain something about why 金玉 might have been appealing as a reference to 金玉滿堂.
Her party "has traditionally been associated with tenants, environmentalists, and the labour movement"[4], so I imagine that perhaps she wanted something green in the name as well, and jade (玉) fits the bill.
[0] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E9%B5%9D#Chinese
[1] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E5%A4%A9%E9%B5%9D#Chinese
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Tam
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Swanson
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coalition_of_Progressive_Elect...