Chinese Characters for Names

[lordoftheweb]

Hello all,

I am planning on getting my son and daughters names tattoo'd on my forearm, and would like to do it in chinese lettering. I find the lettering so beautiful, and want it to be a permanent part of me.

What I am looking for is the chinese characters of these names:

Shayla (thats my daughter)

and

Cole (thats my son)

any help would be extremely appreciated.

Thank you all in advance.

[kenneth_cn]

Shayla 莎拉

Cole 科尔

[lordoftheweb]

yes, Shayla is one name, and Cole is the other name.

I have found the characters for Shayla on a couple of sites, and Cole on one site, but I wanted to confirm them with someone that knows how to read/write chinese lettering (i apologize, i dont know the proper term for the language).

Shayla = (chinese character(s))

Cole = (chinese character(s))

Does anyone know? Thanks!

[imron]

Please bear in mind before you get these tattooed permanently on your skin that these are simply transliterations of the English names into Chinese characters. If you asked a Chinese person what they meant, they almost certainly wouldn't be able to get the original name back, and to them it just looks like gibberish. Chinese doesn't have "lettering" like English does. There are thousands of characters, and in addition to representing a sound, each character contains a meaning (or a partial meaning), and if you put characters that don't belong together next to each other, then it just doesn't make sense.

So yes, when pronounced together those characters sound sort of almost like the English names you provided, but at the same time, the same would have been true if the names of your children were Sarah and Carl - which you could also approximate to the same characters.

In any event they are clearly not names in Chinese, and the fact is, you really can't do a 1-1 mapping of an English name to a Chinese name. Chinese names often contain a complex meaning that represents the dreams and hopes a parent has for their child. So rather than tattooing Chinese gibberish that sort of, almost, maybe, could sound a little bit like the names of your children, perhaps just getting the names tattooed in English would be a safer (albeit less trendy) option.

Edit:

BTW, lordoftheweb, I'm not sure if your computer can display Chinese characters, but kenneth_cn provided a translation of those names for you in his post, to the right of the English names. Those were the names I was talking about in this post.

[imron]

Just another thought, if you're dead-set on getting Chinese characters tattooed, perhaps you could have the name in English followed by/above/below the chinese for son or daughter.

女兒 Shayla

兒子 Cole

What I've written above means literally:

Daughter Shayla

Son Cole

[Lu]

Imron is completely right.

And, is it just me or is 莎拉 more easily associated with 'salad' than with any name?

[lordoftheweb]

thank you for the responses thus far. im not sure how to change the settings on my computer to allow it to view lettering on this forum, but it does display lettering from other forums. And no, my computer displays kenneth_cn's post (and yours as well imron) as:

?? Shayla

?? Cole

Thats not a bad idea of using the words "daughter" and "son" and their names in english.

Any suggestions on how to change the settings? I've thought this through over the last two years, and am pretty much set on getting this done, but just want to do it right.

And thanks for the help and suggestions everyone. I appreciate it.

[imron]

If you want to do it right, just remember that there is no "right" way to write an English name in Chinese. Anyone who says otherwise either doesn't know what they are talking about or is trying to take advantage of the fact that you don't know any better.

Anyway, if the websites you've been looking at are specifically for creating Chinese "names" for English speakers it's quite possible that they are just generating image files (like jpg, gif) because they will know many of their visitors won't have Chinese fonts installed.

If you are using windows XP, then to install Chinese fonts, and support for Chinese language (so you can see the text written in the posts above), you will need to go to start->control panel->regional and language settings, then click on the languages tab, and select "install files for east asian languages" (you will need the Windows XP CD to do this). Once these are installed, you will possibly also need to restart your web-browser.

If you can't get that working, or if you are using a different OS, I've attached a jpg image containing the same text that I wrote above. The font I've used is just a stock standard Chinese font that you might find used for newspapers etc, so it's probably not the most artistic thing to use for a tattoo.

[heifeng]

May I just suggest that maybe if you are really going to get a tattoo, have it say something like my children our my everything or my great fortune, or something along that line. (ok If i were to guess I would say 我子女我一切or我子女我幸福) I think that there must be a good way in Chinese to say this, (maybe a Chinese speaker can add something here), plus then it will carry along the meaning along with it, other than it just saying the word 'son' or 'daughter', or their names' pronunciation translated into chinese characters. Don't worry, something like this should be able to be expressed in only a few characters and also be pretty...if the tattoo is also well done

Since you've waited two years, then you might as well really do some good research into this since each Chinese characters has a deep meaning, so simply expressing something phonetically isn't quite the same.

Hope this helps

[roddy]

Agree with that - if you really want Chinese characters you are much better off with an idiom or perhaps a line from a poem, which will express the same sentiment and actually mean something. Basically, if you get your kids 'Chinese name' tattooed on yourself, Chinese people are still going to have to ask 'So, what are their names?'

[imron]

have it say something like my children our my everything or my great fortune, or something along that line. (ok If i were to guess I would say 我子女我一切or我子女我幸福) I think that there must be a good way in Chinese to say this, (maybe a Chinese speaker can add something here), plus then it will carry along the meaning along with it, other than it just saying the word 'son' or 'daughter', or their names' pronunciation translated into chinese characters.

yes, this is a much better idea..

[imitation]

Arabic will be much cooler than Chinese in a few years try finding something in that to get tatooed. Or use Korean atleast it's a phonetic language.

[lordoftheweb]

hi all. thank you so much for the information and ideas. im really set on chinese lettering (i just find it so much more beautiful than others) and i have a fascination with chinese culture and lifestyles. i already have a chinese dragon on my arm, so i was thinking about putting my new tattoos along side of them, sort of like having the dragon protect them. ill keep looking at examples and ideas.

one idea that i had was tattoo the verse "always in my heart" above their names. any idea how that looks?

anyways, youve all been great thus far, and i hope you can help me along with this. ill try and post the characters that i already have.

have a great day!

[lordoftheweb]

Well its been awhile, but I did end up doing this last January. I have a new daughter now and would like to add her name. Can anyone translate it for me as best as can be done?

Her name is:

Maya

Thank you all!

[imron]

Out of curiosity, what did you end up getting tattooed?

[Lu]

瑪雅 or 瑪亞, I think the first is better.

[here2learn]

I want to know too! I like watching these tattoo threads.

You still there?