Chinese Names - Male or Female

[anon6969]

Is there a website where I can type in Chinese names and it will tell me whether that person is likely to be male or female?

I think a website that did that would be really useful.

Chinese people seem to be able to tell whether a person is Male or Female from a name, but it's something I find very hard to do for all but the most obvious names.

[skylee]

I don't know any website that does what the OP asks.

Many years ago I had a male co-worker, whose name was 張家敏, a very typical female name. Even longer ago I had a classmate, a guy, who was called 林靜雯, a name which I think no man could stand. But he seemed to enjoy how people were surprised by his name.

[imron]

Google image search is good for this. Just do a Google image search for a name, and you'll get back loads of images. It's usually pretty clear from that if the name is then more suited to males or females.

[wai ming]

Many years ago I had a male co-worker, whose name was 張家敏, a very typical female name.

This reminds me of the TVB actor 鄭家穎, aka Kevin Cheng. The first time I heard his name, I thought it was a girl's name, and wondered why my friend was so obsessed with 'her'.

[xiaojiang216]

Maybe this would be helpful?

http://www.chinese-tools.com/tools/gender-guesser.html

[Lu]

Another nice example is 吴健雄 (F).

The gender guesser is nice but flawed, there are a lot of charactes it doesn't pick up at all. If it's any consolation, the Chinese can't always guess it right either.

[imron]

The gender guesser is nice but flawed, there are a lot of charactes it doesn't pick up at all.

Google gets it right

[Lu]

So it does.

Interesting is also that 家敏 gives some girls' pics and a few boys' pics, while 靜雯 gives only girls' pics, and very girly ones at that, illustrating the fact that 家敏 is somewhat acceptable for a boy, but 靜雯 is going a bit too far.

Funny also that searching 健雄 still gives you mostly photos of a woman, namely 吴健雄.

It doesn't always work though. My friend's newborn son is called 金蓝, 金蓝's grandfather said that's a girl's name, but googling it I find mostly pictures of basketball.

So, back on topic, we can conclude that Google Image is a very useful tool, but not infallible.

[imron]

That's interesting, I don't get anything for basketball, but I don't get much in the way of people either. You can always use the - operator to remove certain things from a search, e.g. "金蓝” -"篮球" should remove most of the basketball related items from the results (make sure to use the quotes).

Still, from this, we can conclude however that 金蓝 is perhaps not a common name for a person.

金蓝's grandfather said that's a girl's name,

Perhaps because it sounds like 金兰 which google image search does find several female results for.

[trien27]

Chinese names are more based on meaning than on phonetics. Do a search for Bruce Lee's original name in Chinese and see if it sounds more male or female to you. The name was picked due to the meaning given to it, whether it's from a poem, a name that sounds "strong", because the child was weak, etc...

There's a Hong Kong actor by the name of 陳惠敏. There's a singer by the name of 李惠敏[Amanda Lee]. 惠敏 & 慧敏 [as in singer Vivian Chow: 周慧敏] are usually thought of as female names. When my mother told me that was a man's name, I had to read the magazine article myself to make sure it wasn't a typo!

Chinese males used to have many names & titles in life before the Communist took over China: a newborn name given by the father within three days after birth [nowadays, the birth name can be given by anyone, and the only one in use], a familial nickname [used only by family or those familiar to you], a name used during school years, a name is given when you become an adolescent / adult[you can now make up a name for yourself, if you don't like the birth name], a name that's only used by your peers to address you [so they won't have to address you by your real birth name], a name when you get married, a name when you get older, and a posthumous name or title when you pass away.

Edited March 7, 2009 at 03:54 PM by trien27
additional information

[peekay]

I can't even tell for sure whether a Chinese person is male or female based on their English names.

I know of a guy who's English name is "Wanda" (maybe his real name is something like "wang da") and I saw a boy on TV who's English name was "Lucy".

Then again I'm sure Chinese people cringe at us foreigners' "Chinese names" all the time.