Choosing a Chinese name

[HeDiWen何迪文]

I was wondering how can you tell what someones name would be in Chinese and/or what someone's Chinese name would be in English.

For example, my english name is Steven Harris, so my 老师 gave me the name 何迪文(HeDiWen)。

how does this work out? is there a method to translating anyones name to a correct english or chinese name? Thank you in advance.

[BrandeX]

Chinese, like most names, have a sort of meaning based on it's characters. Steven means "Crown", so perhaps a name involving "冠" might be interesting. Translating them based upon making the sounds match up usually is gibberish. The name your using now is ok though probably. Doesn't have any meaning that I can discern, tho.

[skylee]

I think 何迪文 is an OK name for Steven Harris. The surname 何 comes from the first syllable of Harris, and it is a very common Chinese surname. 迪文 comes from the second and third syllables of Steven. These two characters are commonly used in Chinese names. Meanings of 迪 -> http://humanum.arts.cuhk.edu.hk/cgi-bin/agrep-lindict?query=%ad%7d&category=wholerecord . Meanings of 文 -> http://humanum.arts.cuhk.edu.hk/cgi-bin/agrep-lindict?query=%a4%e5&category=wholerecord . I would interpret 迪文 as "enlightened and cultured".

AFAIK, there is not a "correct" way throughout the Chinese-speaking world to "translate" a foreign name. (There may be some national standards on the Mainland but if there are they are not observed universally.) The easiest way is to transliterate it directly without regard to the meanings of the characters used. This way, your name can be 史提芬.哈里斯 . Or you can transliterate it using words of similar sounds with nice meanings. This way, Vivian Leigh became 慧雲李, where 慧雲 is a beautiful chinese female name (the transliteration was based on Cantonese). Or you can just transliterate the surname, such as 安南 for Kofi Annan and 貝理雅 for Tony Blair. Or you can transliterate a name in the way your teacher has done for your name, using nice characters to represent a combination of syllables from the original name, such as 彭定康 for Chris Patten and 謝肅方 for Stephen Selby.

Edited August 2, 2008 at 03:42 PM by skylee

[Oliver_CL]

I think the chinese name and english name are absolutely unrelatable. Your teacher even can gave you a chinese name that was very random, of course, except some names that are little similar by meaning or pronunciation. But I don't think there is accurate translate method from english to chinese or contrary, for english and chinese are different languges, we could only be sure of gaving the approximate meaning of sentences, as to the accurate words or characters, it's almostly incredible.

[Lili 「麗麗」]

What? I don't really think 何迪文 is like Steven. But OK, if you like that name. If you want something to sound the same to your name maybe like 史蒂芬 (shǐ dì fēn), 哈里斯 (hā lǐ sī).

[LiYuanXi]

史蒂芬is a little feminine and I used to call my friend, whose name was Steven, as 洗地粉. Oops....

[HeDiWen何迪文]

hmmm im not understanding what you mean Lili. I've often told native speakers my chinese name without telling them my english name and they automatically can geuss my english name is Steven. so i think He Di Wen is a good fit and I often get compliments for the name. Apparently it sounds really good to native speakers.

[vampire]

di wen and teven are quite close in pronunciation, easy to guess your english name from 迪文