Nine Lanterns - what's in a name?

We often get asked about our name, Nine Lanterns. So I though it appropriate to offer a range of explanations... But only one is true - email us the correct answer and you'll get a surprise gift by return...

It was the dream of our Founding Art Director, Jason MacDonald, who after waking from a deep sleep one warm summer’s evening in June 2000, conjured up almost without conscious thought, the name, logo and colour scheme that has since become part of what we do and how we do it. Why he ever came to this dream, neither he nor we have ever understood. We think it was a divine message - one we couldn't afford to ignore!

Nine Lanterns is also a winning play in Mahjong (Mahjongg, Mahjong), the classic Chinese game. [The goal in Mahjong is to remove all 144 tiles from the board. You may remove only paired free tiles. The tile is free when there are no tiles either to the left or to the right from it].

Somewhat more scarily, Nine Lanterns is also a Chinese (Daoist) ritual for the destruction of hell:

The ritual master makes the Hand Gesture of Jade Clarity, visualizes yellow clouds in one direction, and visualizes his own appearance as that of the Heavenly Lord. Each time he destroys a hell, he clicks his teeth nine times before and after the incantation so that the hell opens up and the souls of the dead ascend to perfection. Finally, the ritual master prays with the memorial of Withdrawing the Lanterns, saying, "please extinguish the fire of the golden lotus. I sincerely wish that you did not mind his sins of a thousand years, that they disappear with the cinders, and that all the misfortunes harassing him for long be eliminated with the extinction of the light. I wish that his body enter the realm of light and leave the realm of darkness forever”.

Well there is it, take your pick. I guess the idea of nine individual lanterns helping our clients see their way through the darkness of ignorance is potentially the most apt take on our name... but some would argue it's also the most pretentious...