He? Heh? Hëh? ? The story of my Chinese last name.

[yanggers]

My family name is 荷 "he3", pronounced the same way as river (河) and box (盒). We've been using that pinyin spell in the States for a decade now, but I am getting naturalized this year and want to take this opportunity to make the spell more accurate to the pronunciation. Nobody ever pronounce "He" the Chinese way...

doctor: "Um, Hee? Hi? Did you forget a letter there?"

me: "No it's like the British 'her' without the 'r'..."

Has anyone found good way to phonetically transliterate the sound of "he3" to English? Maybe even borrowing from the inventory of German letters, etc.?

[imron]

Hur (as in Ben) might work, but still no guarantee people will get it right.

(incidentally 河 and 盒 are both he2).

[fanglu]

Alternatively you could write it normally and just invent a pronunciation, eg the English word 'he'. That's the approach of a lot of my friends in Australia. I have a friend called 徐 (xu2) who tells everyone his surname is pronounced 'zoo' and another called 治 (zhi4) who tells everyone its pronounced 'zee'.

My last name is quite hard to pronounce too and I've just gotten used to it being said in a 100 different ways. I'm pretty sure even the way I say it is nothing like the Italians it originally belonged to say it. It doesn't really bother me.

I suspect no matter how you write your name it'll be mispronounced. 'Hur' is a good suggestion, but the way Americans emphasise rs I doubt it will sound anything like what you want a lot of the time. Also, with accents other than American no guarantee it will be that close to he3. If I didn't think of the movie, I'd probably pronounce it like 'haar'.

[yanggers]

whops, right, I meant "he2" the upward tone for all the letters. Haha, Ben-Hur is a Jewish name right? I knew an Iserali friend who went by Chen, pronounced not like the popular Chinese last name 陈 but a really deep "HHEn" like clearing your throat.

Man, I wish we ca use International Phonetic Alphabet. What would my last name be in that I wonder.

[skylee]

How about Hurt?

Or would you consider Lotus?

[liuzhou]

Man, I wish we ca use International Phonetic Alphabet. What would my last name be in that I wonder.

That would only make things worse. Here is the simplest form of IPA for your name. Adding tone markers would make it even more confusing.!

[Lu]

Wade-Giles would be Ho, that's not helping much...

You can try and find how Taiwanese people named He spell their name, they are crazy creative when it comes to spelling their name. I once came across a woman surnamed 黄 who spells her name Hawang.

(I looked on google for a bit, and found variants Ho, He, Her and Hor.)

But to be honest, personally I think the best would be to just leave it at He. Your family has used this spelling for a decade already, and it's the official spelling of that surname according to the most widely used romanization of it. And I say this as someone with a surname that even in my home country is considered difficult.

[cababunga]

Why German? Why don't you just leave the pinyin tone mark in place in this case: "Hě". FWIW, looks like in all other names 荷泽, 荷兰, 荷马 it pronounced with the second tone "Hé". In any case, diacritic will tell that the word is not, and should not be pronounced as English pronoun.

[gougou]

If it's second tone, you'll risk making it look French like that though, which would be yet another pronunciation.

[Hofmann]

Huh?

[Luobot]

Hertz is another spelling variant.

[ABCinChina]

This is difficult, but I think the closest pronunciation is "Huh". (Agree with Hofmann)

[imron]

Giving yourself the surname Huh, would IMO probably be more confusing than He. I think Hé with a tone is probably your best bet. People won't get the pronunciation, but at least they'll have a visual clue that it's not just the English "he".

[gato]

Maybe "Hurr"?

[Hofmann]

I was just kidding with the "Huh?"

It think "He" is best.

[ABCinChina]

You may consider "Huhh". It still looks like "huh?" but has an extra "h" and a native English will automatically pronounce it as "huh?" with the second tone since he or she will not be sure. It will go like this...

Some Guy: Hello Mr...."huh?"...did I get that right?

Mr. Huhh: That's correct and exactly how you pronounce my last name!

Edited January 5, 2009 at 05:22 AM by ABCinChina

[imron]

Sounds nothing like He though, and imagine all the crap your kids (if and when you ever have them) will eventually get when they go to school with a name like Huh.

[ABCinChina]

That's true, but kids will make fun of about anything they can. With a name like He, kids will be saying stuff like, "Hey, look! It's He-man! The master of the universe".

The unfortunate thing is that many Chinese surnames will get laughed at outside of China. Names that are cool like 龍 turn into Long. I can instantly think of "Long Shlong" and such. Anyways, the point is that Chinese surnames are difficult to turn into English because there's no identical sounds.

[new_muse]

I would go with 'Her' as it's kind of close to the correct pronunciation of 'He' and it's an actual word in English, making it easier for English speakers to pronounce and visualise. Although in Pinyin your surname would be 'He', an English speaking person would always mispronounce 'He' as 'Hee'. Incidentally, He is also my surname, but my family spells it the Cantonese way. Have you thought about spelling it in your own dialect?

[Hofmann]

"Huhh" looks even more like a confused interjection.