Tibetan hello.

One of my (female) (Tibetan) coworkers, the really nice one who was anxious about the body of the one resident being taken me away so soon, taught me the typical Tibetan greeting the other day, and she said that I should go and surprise the other Tibetan who was working with it.

So I did that, and that (male) Tibetan coworker was surprised, and pleasantly so.

I asked him what it meant, too, and he really couldn't explain.

"It's like 'hello' but better," he was like.  "It's like all the good things."

Once, too, a few months ago, me and him had been talking about Tibetan names, and he couldn't really explain a lot of them either and he used explanations like that, like that the name is "something really good," so I ended up googling them, and the names all turned out to be all of these Buddhist concepts and stuff.

I find it interesting that when all of that kind of stuff meets the limits of my coworker's vocabulary, he explains them all by saying that they're "really good."

I wonder how much of those names and sayings are like that on a conscious level for Tibetans, every day, and how much of it is like when you meet a woman here and her name is Hope, since you don't really think about that name at all as a concept unless you're asked about it, it's all like background in your mind.