rezaf Posted August 30, 2011 at 12:27 PM Report Share Posted August 30, 2011 at 12:27 PM 妮（ni） means girl。 香(xiang) means sweet so 香妮 somehow means sweet girl. Edit: FYI the pronunciation of "x" in Mandarin is almost the same as "Sh" in English. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
xiaocai Posted August 30, 2011 at 12:52 PM Report Share Posted August 30, 2011 at 12:52 PM How about 娴霓? I think 妮 sounds a bit too young, like a little girl's name. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shanny Posted August 30, 2011 at 01:27 PM Author Report Share Posted August 30, 2011 at 01:27 PM rezaf - so how would you write xiang in english-letters? (I understand that it won't be exactly the same) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
imron Posted August 30, 2011 at 01:32 PM Report Share Posted August 30, 2011 at 01:32 PM rezaf - so how would you write xiang in english-letters? x-i-a-n-g Actually, it's meaning is usually closer to fragrant than sweet. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shanny Posted August 30, 2011 at 01:42 PM Author Report Share Posted August 30, 2011 at 01:42 PM I mean, I have no idea how to pronounce it if x =something-similar-to-sh so.....shang? shiang? o_O and what does 娴霓means? (sorry for so many questions i'm kinda lost ._. ) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
skylee Posted August 30, 2011 at 02:03 PM Report Share Posted August 30, 2011 at 02:03 PM I have a friend called Sanny (I just had dinner with her tonight), and her Chinese name is 生英 (sheng1 ying1). It is a real name, and very Chinese. Perhaps you could consider it too. I think 尚妮 (shang4 ni2) is also quite good. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rezaf Posted August 30, 2011 at 02:18 PM Report Share Posted August 30, 2011 at 02:18 PM Go to http://www.zdic.net/ . Copy paste any character that you want and press 搜索。 It will give you the meaning and the pronunciation. Also shows you how to write it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jkhsu Posted August 30, 2011 at 04:46 PM Report Share Posted August 30, 2011 at 04:46 PM @Shanny You can see from this thread that choosing a Chinese name is difficult! A lot of people have given you some good opinions and suggestions. You haven't told us why you need to choose a Chinese name but typically people get Chinese names when they are taking a Chinese class and their teachers are often the ones who chooses one for them. My advice would be to ask a native Chinese speaker what they think (you must know a few?). It would be best to show them this link so they can see all of the suggestions and discussion. Hopefully, they can read English also. Just remember when choosing a Chinese name, regardless of how close sounding it is to your English name, make sure you understand the meaning of the characters so that you don't end up with a name with an unpleasant meaning. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gharial Posted August 30, 2011 at 04:56 PM Report Share Posted August 30, 2011 at 04:56 PM I must say, I wonder why people who don't seem to be studying much Chinese or needing to interact in Chinese etc, actually need Chinesey names. In my experience, the way naming foreigners usually works ( ~ more smoothly and effortlessly!) is that your tutor, somebody who knows you personally, helps choose a name for you (Edit: I see Jkhsu's said something similar in his post immediately above), especially if you aren't informed enough (e.g. have little or indeed no apparent grasp even of how Pinyin syllables are pronounced) to choose one yourself. I was thinking of mentioning the syllable 'shan', so Jkhsu's suggestion on page 1 of using something like 善 seems good; that being said, I'm not sure how frequent geminate (i.e. doubled) consonants ('shanni') are in Mandarin compared to say Japanese, so I don't know how natural this would ultimately sound (then again, foreign names transliterated into Chinese probably ALL sound a bit wierd, so perhaps something like Skylee's suggestions in post #26 really would be better!). Another thing to bear in mind with naming is how one's surname might be incorporated. (I'm assumming Shanny is just a first name). For example, my tutor gave me an apparently very Chinese-sounding name three syllables/characters long, but as the first two syllables were to represent my (bisyllabic) English surname and only the last syllable represent my (bisyllabic) English first name, I decided to retain just the very first character (a common enough Chinese surname) for my surname and have whatever last two syllables fully represent my first name (I mean, first names are what foreigners are called and will use the most, so they're pretty important for people you meet to be able to easily grasp and get right!), and ended up simply using what appears to be the standard two-character transliteration of my first name. So it was sort of like my name was Jason Lillian (not my real name!) and my tutor had given me the name Li Lian Jie when I'd've preferrred to be called Li + "Jason" (however 'Jason' might be rendered) LOL. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rezaf Posted August 31, 2011 at 12:57 AM Report Share Posted August 31, 2011 at 12:57 AM I think we are making it too complicated for the OP. @Shanny: I'd say go for either: 香妮 or 尚妮。 I personally prefer skylee's 尚妮。 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
skylee Posted August 31, 2011 at 01:05 AM Report Share Posted August 31, 2011 at 01:05 AM I agree with rezaf's #43. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
imron Posted August 31, 2011 at 07:22 AM Report Share Posted August 31, 2011 at 07:22 AM Moved discussion about pronunciation of she/xi to here. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shanny Posted September 2, 2011 at 08:20 AM Author Report Share Posted September 2, 2011 at 08:20 AM Thank you all for the help and suggestions, you helped me a lot! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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