Time for a Chinese name.

[renzhe]

You should make decisions relating to names based on the opinion of native speakers, but I'd say that both 良 and 亮 have a good meaning and are nice-looking characters.

[skillphiliac]

Good ideas, I really like 亮 here. Thank you!

[imron]

Well, turns out the thread (following the board's reconstruction) is somewhat buried in a not-too-appropriate sub-forum, so I got no choice left but reappealing to all of you and your capabilities.

Merged with original thread and moved everything back to the Names and Quick Translations forum.

[skillphiliac]

Thank you, although you startled me a bit there.

[skylee]

Consider 明亮 (Mingliang) and 敏倫 (minlun).

For the surname, consider 簡 (Jian3). 簡明亮 means simple and bright, which I think is very good.

When people stop answering your posts, sometimes it's not because that they can't help. Sometimes people get tired.

[skillphiliac]

Sooo...

What would you think of Ning Minliang (佞敏亮）?

[skylee]

IMO, 敏亮 is ok, but 佞 is not good.

And I have some more comments -

1) this is exactly why I find it tiring: first you asked people to comment on something, and people did. And then you changed your mind and threw some more options, and people still answered. And then you did it again, throwing something totally different from the previous options (段敏僬), and people just stopped.

2) With Chinese names, there is one fundamental thing that stays unchanged - a person's family name. People might change their given names or have different names (style names, etc) but they usually retain their family name. The family name is a constant. And when I suggest chinese names to foreigners I usually think it logical that there is some sort of a constant that I can refer to - like the pronunciation of the original name, or the meaning of the original name. I think it is kind of unusual for a person to just make up a full name with no relevance to his family name or original name whatsoever. And the meanings of the names is IMO far more important than the sound (but of course nobody would want a name that sounds awful).

3) I think people should not use really rare word in a name. What is the point if people can't even pronounce your name? There are very nice real-life names that are really simple, like 許諾 and 黎明.

[yersi]

Skillphiliac, you seem to really like rare and obscure characters, but you have to realize your name isn't really the place to show off your knowledge and Chinese skills. My feeling is that it will come across as very overbearing and arrogant to a Chinese person if you deliberately picked characters for a name that they would have to look up in a dictionary to understand.

My suggestion to you is to settle for a common surname like 唐 and combine that with the personal name you suggested, 敏亮. 佞 means "sycophant", which you would know if you put some more thought into this than randomly browsing the dictionary and just throwing out stuff expecting that some stranger behind a computer in another country would sort it out for you.

[skillphiliac]

I'll keep it short: Neither do I randomly discard ideas brought up by others, nor do I want unusual characters, no. I myself would think of it as rather... strange, or even arrogant, but then again it is hard for me to judge considering my lack of knowledge.

Either way, thank you.

Edited May 22, 2009 at 03:15 AM by skillphiliac