Names and their translations

[tiffsmith]

I plan to learn Chinese. As a fun little project I thought I could write some family names in Chinese and become familiar with them. I would like to make sure that there isn't anything derogatory associated with any of the terms.

阿迪孙

佳德

萨姆

蒂法妮

Thanks in advance for your help!!

[rootfool]

Most foreigner's name are translated by pronounciation,so they haven't any meanings.Don't worry about that.

[tiffsmith]

Thats good to know. Thank you!

谢谢

[skylee]

Are the names Edison, Samuel, Jade, Tiffany?

The Chinese names you quoted are tranliteration. Sometimes we would use more beautiful / meaningful characters to make them more beautiful / meaningful. I think the characters used in your case are ok, although some people might find the last character in the first name, i.e. 孙, a bit odd in a name. The character itself is a surname, but it means grandson, and if someone who is not your grandparent calls you grandson it could be an insult. But I am probably thinking too much.

佳德 has a very good meaning -> good virtue

The Jeweller Tiffany calls itself 蒂芙尼 in Chinese.

[tiffsmith]

Hello Skylee, thank you for your response!

The first name should be Addison, the other ones are spot on. Do you know of a better way to say Addison or anything very similar without 孙?

How about 阿迪森?

Its nice to know that Jade means "good virtue". Jade will be pleased to learn that.

Thanks again! 谢谢

Tiffany

[skylee]

阿迪森 is ok.

Jade is a piece of fine stone. 佳德 (Jiade) means "good virtue".

[tiffsmith]

Thanks again!

[CyraSafia]

although names are translated by pronunciation, but for some of the names there are fixed translations.

I think Samuel is often translated as 山姆, for it's simpler, and "山" is used more often than "萨"

Tiffany is always translated as "蒂凡尼" , be cause of the famous movie "Breakfast at Tiffany's"

however, I think "佳德" is a very good translation, cause it has both similar pronunciation and good meaning.

[tiffsmith]

Thank you CyraSafia, I like the translation of Samuel and Tiffany you gave. It looks like it will be a little easier to write.

I start Rosetta Stone next week, so thats when I really get into the language, but I am having a lot of fun writing and becoming familiar with the characters!

谢谢

[CheukMo]

tiffsmith,

May I ask what book or program you are using as the introduction? Is it about writing?

謝謝你,

卓武

[tiffsmith]

I started out reading literature about the Chinese culture. After that, I moved on to some common greetings. I have been using free resources provided on the internet, now I'm pretty hooked. I hope Rosetta Stone can offer me a fun learning experience and get me to the point where it feels a bit more natural.

[CheukMo]

I was a Spanish teacher and I would say that Spanish grammar is much more difficult than Chinese. With the tones (I'm learning Cantonese which has six) Chinese pronunciation is more difficult. It's great to hear that you are teaching your kids other languages. I think every kid should be at least bilingual today... Good Luck!

[tiffsmith]

Thanks for wishing me luck, I'm going to need it.

[thph2006]

Here's another name request. Virtually no Chinese person I meet can pronounce my last name without great pain so I was thinking of adopting a sort of phonetically abbreviated Chinese version. I thought maybe something like Han (韩???) might work since it's almost like a super compressed version of Harrington with sounds from the beginning middle and end of the name and it's single character like most Chinese surnames. Of course, I'm sure there are even better suggestions out there.

Oh, also please let me know if it's a cultural no-no to alter my name for Chinese consumption. In that case I'll just live with all the mispronunciations.

Anyone care to give me a name?

Cheers, Tom

[tiffsmith]

Would this work? I don't know much yet AT ALL but wanted to give it a whirl and am interested to see if I came close...

哈林东

or

哈琳顿

[skylee]

Consider 韓領東 (Han Lingdong).

[CyraSafia]

Mulan is a good story, I love it

and I like your way of teaching,tiffsmith

Harrington might be translated as "哈林顿"

considering Harry Potter is "哈里 波特" and Clinton is "克林顿"

I think if you want to get some translation, www.google.cn might be helpful(however, it is a Chinese site)

search the page only in simplified Chinese, you may get the translation.

[tiffsmith]

Mulan is a good story, I love it

and I like your way

Thank you CyraSafia.