Need some help translating my name

[jaimieleigh84]

Hi,

I am trying to find the correct translation of my name in Chinese

I am really struggling with this as every website I seem to go on gives me a different answer!

My name is JAIMIE LEIGH (Female)

Please if anyone could help me this would be most appreciated!!!

Thanks!!

Jaimie

Edited July 20, 2008 at 01:51 AM by gougou
De-dramatized title

[lemur]

The reason you are getting different answers is because there is no one true answer to the question "what is the translation of the name Jaimie Leigh in Chinese". (And also probably because some of the web sites you visited have been put together by amateurs who don't really know Chinese.)

To take the example of "Louis", which is my first name, I could look into a dictionary and see how they translated into Chinese the name of the French kings of the same name (which would make sense because my name is of French origin) and use that. The Chinese came up with a translation for "Louis" which attempts to preserve pronunciation. Or I could just decide to create my own name by selecting Chinese characters which sound like "Louis".

The above methods attempt to preserve sound but you can also try a translation which tries to preserve meaning. I've never been able to get a straight answer about the etymology of Louis but if you take a name like Irene which is from the Greek meaning "peace" then maybe the Chinese for peace might be an option.

So right off the bat, if you want to "translate", you have at least three broad methods and some of them can produce multiple answers.

And then you can actually forget about trying to "translate" your name and just have someone who really knows Chinese and knows you craft a Chinese name for you which looks and sounds Chinese. This is what I did: my Mandarin teacher (who is Taiwanese) looked at my name, thought about what kind of student I am and picked a name for me. As far as she is concerned, this is the only appropriate method.

If you tell us why you need this translation that might help figure out which method would be most appropriate for your situation.

[jaimieleigh84]

Hi Lemur,

Thanks for your reply!!

I want to get a tattoo of my name in Chinese.. this is the reason why I want the translation to be correct!!

I have had some people get back to me but with male versions of Jaimie instead of the female one I am after.. would this make a difference whether it is male/female?

My first name is Jaimie, ,middle name is Leigh

How would you translate my name just so i have an idea?

Thanks again,

Jaimie

[renzhe]

There is no correct translation of "Jaimie" into Chinese. The translation would mean that the Chinese name has the same meaning as Jaimie, but this would sound nothing like Jaimie. The transliteration would sound roughly like Jaimie, but would mean a bunch of gibberish.

Also, there is no difference between "Jamie" and "Jaimie", and whether they are male or female variations, because they sound the same. There are some characters which you wouldn't use in a male or female name, but this is not often the case in transliterated names.

This site recommends 杰米, which reads "Jie Mi", and means "heroic rice". That's as close as you can get, really. You could also try some combination of "jie", "zhe" and "mie", but chances are that many of them will have silly meanings, and won't really read the same as "Jaimie" anyway.

This is why people who know Chinese usually recommend you don't get a tattoo of your name written using Chinese characters.

[jaimieleigh84]

Thanks!!

I have been given the attached symbols by someone else.. what do these mean????

[renzhe]

It is also read "jie mi" and means "heroic honey".

Don't think of them as "symbols". Think of them as words.

If you really insist on "jie mi", you can pick a "jie" from here and a "mi" from here, but the chances are that most combination will be silly.

[imron]

The same characters could also be interpreted to mean Jimmy or Jamie. The fact is, you can't just translate an English name into Chinese. Please have a read of this and this to familiarize yourself with the issues involved.

This might not be the answer you want to hear, but that's how it is.

[lemur]

I want to get a tattoo of my name in Chinese.. this is the reason why I want the translation to be correct!!

I will let renzhe give opinions about the translations because I consider my Chinese to be much too poor to be of any help here.

The only thing I will add is that getting a Chinese version of your name tattooed is a very risky idea. And my advice to anyone who wants to do this is: "don't do it." The fact of the matter is that tattoo artists in general are neither experts in Chinese calligraphy nor do they usually know Chinese. They tend to mess with Chinese characters in ways that impair readability, sometimes very badly. Additionally, as evidenced by your asking us to translate your name, you are not in any position to catch their mistakes. Once the mistake is on your body, it is very hard to fix. You should go to this site:

http://www.hanzismatter.com/

and read Tian's blog entries. Keep in mind that things which might not look bad to you will look absolutely ridiculous to people who can read Chinese characters. This entry in particular is both outrageous (poor client) and hilarious (amazing gibberish!):

http://www.hanzismatter.com/2008/07/leah.html

The tattoo artist who did that work clearly had no clue about what he was doing.

[sabbatia]

Hi. I am new to this forum, hope I can help.

The problem of "translation" your name is:

1 because of Chinese pronouncing system, it is hard to get an exact "translation"

2 every Chinese character has inherent meanings, so sometime it doesn't sound good. But don't get to far on this, if you insist on finding some silly meaning, every Chinese's name can be rendered that way.

You just want to make sure:

don't use bad meaning characters,

the Chinese name (two characters) doesn't read the same to some bad words

3 the tradition of naming is somewhat different in China. There isn't a fixed pool of names, the parents simply choose one or two characters which they like. There is no strict difference of "female/male" name, many names can be used by female or male.

So there are usually two ways to "translate" a name

1 use the "formal" translation. The authority has a long list of suggest character to each sound. The bad news is the result can have silly meaning and even not, it usually doesn't sounds like a Chinese name.

Your name would be 杰米 or 吉米 in this way. (tell me if you can't see Chinese characters). They are both "valid" names, lots of English names are translated this way. And some Chinese use these as alias.

The only reason you would not like it is some male gets this name. But as I said, there isn't strict difference of female/male name.

2 Someone actually create a Chinese names which sounds somewhat similar to their English name.

well, but craft a brand-new Chinese name is already not easy, because it has to have good meanings and pronunciation. it can be even harder to make sure it sounds like your English name.

Someone did very well on this, Kevin Rudd (Australia prime minister) has Chinese name

陆 克文, it is a very "Chinese" name, also reads exactly the same to his English name.

to your situation, you can replace 杰 with 洁, which means "clean, elegant" and pretty female. (洁米would be cleaned rice, but don't think you have to worry too much:mrgreen:)

or replace 米 with 美, which means "beauty" and is common to girl's name.

I would say 洁美 be pretty "Chinese", and totally non-male. I just googled web, there are plenty of Chinese female get this name.

But honesty, don't rush to craft a Chinese name, you can get unexpected result:lol:

[studentyoung]

My name is JAIMIE LEIGH (Female)

How about 婕美•赖 or 赖婕美?

赖(lai4) is a common surname in China.

婕(jie2) means princess or beauty in Chinese.

美(mei3) means beauty.

Cheers!

[jaimieleigh84]

婕美•赖

I like this one! Thanks Studentyoung!!

Could you tell me what this means please??

Thanks for all the replys from everyone so far, most appreciated!

Does anyone else have any suggestions for me??

THANKYOU!!!!!!

[renzhe]

studentyoung told you what the characters mean, she's not lying

It's probably as good a name as you can find.

[jaimieleigh84]

Oh yes I just realised that LOL sorry!!

So this is a good name for me?

Thanks!!

[yersi]

It's an okay name but I'd think thrice or maybe four times before you tattoo any Chinese character on your body. I say this because I know a lot of people who have regretted getting some on theirs and once that mistake is made it's not cheap to get off.

If you still wanna go ahead with this at least take some time to find a Chinese tattoo artist who knows what he is doing.

[paystrong]

That's really a tough decision.To translate your familyname into Chinese,I suggest that you use a Chinese charactor which has the similar pronoucication,and your familyname is leigh ,in fact I'm not quite sure how you pronounce your familyname,if that is li3 the best character in Chinese is 李and it's also the familyname of the king in Tang Dynasty,nowadays there are so many people both in China and Korea whose familyname is 李.on the flip side if you pronounce your familyname like le4 and the charactor for it is 赖 or 来 ，I donnot think it would be wise for you to choose 赖as your Chinese family name ,because this charactor has a bad story in history,the charactor in Chiese means not very loyal and always break the promise or something.In ancient times the king pushed this familyname to the person who were against the law.however，来is a better choice if your familyname is pronouned like Le2orLe4 .if you pronouce yourFN like lei2

the charactor in Chinese is 雷

for the name part，usually we try to find a meaningful word，it depends on what kind of peroson you are and what kind of person you wannaB ,for you only 杰 is enough,it stands for the best.

so ,acording to those things up how about 李杰，来杰or雷杰

[renzhe]

来is a better choice if your familyname is pronouned like Le2orLe4

来 is pronounced lai2 in standard Mandarin. Is this a dialectal pronunciation?

[skylee]

婕美 as suggested by studentyoung is a great name. As for the surname Leigh, you might wish to consider 李 or 利 (which are pronounced "Li") instead of 賴 (which is pronounced "Lai").

I would suggest you follow the format of most Chinese names by putting the surname before the given name, like 李婕美 or 利婕美.

[jaimieleigh84]

婕美李

Would this be an acceptable name for me?

I like this one. Am I right in thinking this is

jie2 婕

mei3 美

li3 李

Many Thanks for everyones help!!!

[renzhe]

If skylee says it's a good name, then it's a good name. She's a native speaker (as is studentyoung, IIRC) and has a better grasp of what makes a good name than most of us learners.

To me, it looks like a good (authentic) Chinese name, which also takes from your original name's pronunciation, and has a good meaning in the process. You have the best of all worlds. 李 is a very typical family name too.

Just keep in mind that the Chinese put the family name first, so 李婕美 would be the better way to write it. Otherwise people might think your family name is 婕 and your name 美李

The pronunciation is correct, but it would be a good idea to ask a native Mandarin speaker to read it for you to make sure you have the right sound in your head.