Chinese name into Chinese

[twokids]

Hi,

My mother was Chinese, and I gave my daughter (1/4 Chinese) a Chinese middle name. After looking on the internet, I came up with Lian, meaning Graceful Willow, (or Daughter of the Sun) depending on which website it came from. I asked my mom for the characters,but she said she didn't know. All the translation websites just want to translate English names into Chinese, not give the characters for a Chinese name. Which of course could be any of a bunch of names, depending on the accents and pronunciation.

I've been searching all over www.chinese-tools for the characters, but am getting stumped and overwhelmed. What I have found is the usual English-Chinese literal translation, but can't then find the meanings of the characters. Here is one of the 5 results it gives. http://www.chinese-tools.com/names/calligraphy/code_5225_lian.html

Ideally I'd find the characters that sound like Lian and mean graceful willow, but at this point I'm willing to change the meaning if I have to. My daughter is starting Chinese school and they want her to have a Chinese name. They have randomly assigned her one based on her English first name, but I'd rather use her actual Chinese name.

Thanks for reading and any suggestions.

-- Mai Lon

[imron]

I'm not sure about graceful willow, however in Mandarin 莲(simplified) or 蓮 (traditional) is pronounced Lian and means lotus/water lily. It's used quite often in girls' names.

A one character name is probably not going to be acceptable for a school so you'll also need to combine it with a Chinese surname.

[twokids]

Thanks for the reply. Yes, the teacher was surprised when I first pronounced Lian as a more one syllable word than two and said something about it only being one character. If it is a common part of a girls name, what can it be combined with? Although I would rather pronounce Lian with two syllables and come up with good characters for that.

-- Mai Lon

[imron]

If your mother was Chinese, perhaps the best thing would be to combine it with your mother's Chinese surname.

Lian as a single character is pronounced quite similarly to the English name Leanne. If you wanted it as two characters, it would be have to be pronounced more like Li An, or Li En. You could also go for characters with slightly different pronunciation such as Lai An or Lai En. With two character names though, you might not have much luck getting the same meaning.

[muyongshi]

Could even do liu an- which that liu does mean willow.

[twokids]

"Could even do liu an- which that liu does mean willow. "

And what could an mean?

-- Mai Lon

[renzhe]

Usually, "peaceful, calm": 安

And "willow" muyongshi referred to would be: 柳

The problem with a single-character name is that you usually use two characters to call a person.

If a person has a two-character given name, you call that. If they only have a single-character given name, you use the entire name, including the family name, so you're back to two characters again. Since your daughter doesn't have a Chinese surname, this won't work.

But seriously, if your daughter has a Chinese name, and this Chinese name really is "莲", then you should call her that. If you need two characters, make it "小莲" and you're set. 小 means "little" and is often used in names like that.

[imron]

Be careful though about just putting characters together because the characters 柳安 is the name of a kind of plywood used in floorboards and furniture.

[renzhe]

oooops.

[imron]

You could also consider things like Li Yan, e.g. 李岩，李嫣，李妍，李燕 etc.

All of these use 李 as the surname, however IMO, it would seem a little inappropriate to choose some random surname rather than the Chinese surname of your family.

[James Johnston]

English speakers not familiar with Chinese probably tend to mispronounce Lian as something like 'Lee-Ann' whereas the correct pronunciation should be close to 'Lee-Yen' where 'Yen' is pronounced like the Japanese currency.

In Mandarin Chinese, you can use two characters to approximate this sound either by using Li Yan, as Imron suggested, or Li En, which should be written Li'en, and is probably slightly closer to Lian.

Possible characters for Li'en include:

李恩 which includes the family name 李, which is OK unless you want to find out and include her grandmother's Chinese family name. The second character means 'kindness' and is very common in names.

Another possibility is:

丽恩 which includes two very nice characters, the first meaning 'beautiful' and the second 'kindness' (the same as above). Both characters are very common separately in names, but only rarely occur as a pair in Chinese names. In fact, while google shows they do occur occasionally in Chinese names (there are 93 results for Zhang Li'en 张丽恩, 573 results for Wang Li'en 王丽恩), they are more commonly used to transliterate foreign names into Chinese. This name does has the advantage that if you did find out your mother's name, then you could just add that character in front of 丽恩.

[muyongshi]

Can't believe I didn't think of that- Thanks James! I wonder if you thought that was the meaning that it might be willow and grace together {not graceful just the word grace} 柳恩: liu en. If that is the actually meaning.

[James Johnston]

I hadn't thought about it, but 柳恩 Liu'en does come pretty close to graceful willow in both meaning and sound. To be honest, I think this is just coincidence, because I don't place a lot of faith in the baby name websites.

Just look at this website and see how many names on there are supposed to mean "daughter of the sun" despite coming from completely different languages. My guess is most of the website just copy the content from one another, so one mistake quickly spreads.

However, this website looks reasonably reliable for its Chinese names judging by the few I've looked at, and it's definition for Lian is, not surprisingly, lotus flower.

So I think it basically comes down the the OP to choose between a few options.

1) 莲莲 Use the name Lian meaning lotus flower, which is a very common girl's name. If you need two syllables to make it sound more regular then you can just repeat it Lianlian, which is perfectly normal in a Chinese name.

2) 柳恩 Keep the approximate meaning graceful willow, but with a slightly different pronunciation which is Liu'en.

3) Use two characters which sound pretty similar Lian, e.g. 丽恩, 李恩 or 李燕

[James Johnston]

Sorry, I forgot to link to that second website and I can't edit it until it gets approved by the moderator. The link is:

http://www.babyhold.com/list/Chinese_Baby_Names/

It might be worth having a record of it on the forum so that people can identify a fairly reliable source of the meanings of some Chinese names in future.

[imron]

either by using Li Yan, as Imron suggested, or Li En, which should be written Li'en, and is probably slightly closer to Lian.

I would probably say that Li Yan is closer in pronunciation to Lian. After all, in pinyin 'yan' is just the way of writing the -ian final when there is no initial.

Also, just my two cents, but I don't think any of the 2 character names listed so far as a substitute for Lian are as nice as using 莲。

[muyongshi]

I hadn't thought about it, but 柳恩 Liu'en does come pretty close to graceful willow in both meaning and sound. To be honest, I think this is just coincidence, because I don't place a lot of faith in the baby name websites.

I agree about the coincidence- I misread the OP's post about where the name came from- i thought her mom gave it to her daughter.

Also, just my two cents, but I don't think any of the 2 character names listed so far as a substitute for Lian are as nice as using 莲。

Agreed.

[twokids]

Thank you for all of the suggestions. Too bad about the plywood combination, though. I think I'll James' second option,

2) 柳恩 Keep the approximate meaning graceful willow, but with a slightly different pronunciation which is Liu'en.

Now I just have to print it out to take to the teacher and learn how to pronounce my daughter's name.

But to add to the confusion, my mother's surname was Chin. I have the Chinese in her handwriting, but it's kind of sloppy and I haven't been able to match it to any computerized Chin character.

-- Mai Lon

[James Johnston]

Your mother's surname is probably 陈 or 陳. The way of writing Chinese using the Roman alphabet has changed over time, and this is now written Chen. It's a very common surname. Does it look like the one you have written down?

Just so there is no misunderstanding, Liu'en means 'willow tree' and 'kindness', so that it grace in the sense of personality rather than appearance.

Also, just so you know 陈柳恩 includes two surnames, so it's a little unusual, but Google shows that some people do have 柳恩 as a personal name.

[imron]

It could also be 秦 Qin, which is pronounced very similarly to how one would pronounce "Chin" in English, if you could post a picture of her handwriting I'm sure someone here would be able to decipher it.

[muyongshi]

2) 柳恩 Keep the approximate meaning graceful willow, but with a slightly different pronunciation which is Liu'en

Common now- give credit where credit is due.

My guess is that it is qin 秦 as opposed to chen.

Also, just so you know 陈柳恩 includes two surnames, so it's a little unusual, but Google shows that some people do have 柳恩 as a personal name.

Not that unusual- 柳 may be a surname but it is also a very common given name as well.