Chinese name?

[Eduardo]

Hi all, I just have a couple of questions about the process of making up a Chinese name.

I'm taking first year Chinese in college right now, and I was assigned this name:

贡尔华 (Traditional: 貢爾華), read Gòng ěrhuá. My name in western script is Eduardo Gonzalez.

All was well and good until I learned to use some online dictionaries and found out that the given name they gave me, 爾華 means something like "you're Chinese."

My questions are, 1. Do Chinese people look at and think about the meaning of the characters of names, or do they just ignore it and it just doesn't matter if it's nonsensical and silly like mine is?

2. I played around with a dictionary a little more and came up with 貢恩道 (Gong Endao), does this sound too simplistic/trite?

[yulu1]

Sometimes, we'll think about the meaning of one person's name. Though 尔means 你, and 华 means 中华 or 中国, I don't think 尔华 definitely means you're Chinese. I don't think it's not appropriate as a name for a foreigner. Meanwhile, we don't see one person's name very important. Anyway, if you don't like 尔华, I think 恩道 is also a good choice for you.

[muirm]

Yes, Chinese people definitely think about names in terms of the meanings of each character (typically just for given names - surnames don't have as much to do with the literal character's meaning). You can often see this when you introduce yourself to a Chinese person - he quite possibly will ask you which er3 and which hua2 are in your name so as to understand what your name means.

Your name sounds like it sacrificed some coolness in meaning to sound similar to your English name. As for picking a new name, you for sure want to run it by a native speaker. Preferrably, you want to get an educated native speaker who knows you to pick one for you, or wait until you have studied for a few years so you have a feel for what makes up an acceptable name. I personally prefer Chinese names that aren't transliterations of English names - you have much more freedom to use a more meaningful, more Chinese name.

[Eduardo]

Thanks a lot for the replies and advice! To be safe, I'll run Gong Erhua by some other people too, but at least I know that it's not an emergency to change my name or anything, and that I can if I choose to. Thanks again.

[trien27]

贡 = Chinese rendition of first syllable of your last name Gonzalez

尔华 = approximation of Edward, English translation of your name.