What do the signs in this name mean?

[Joergi]

Hi guys,

I had the name of a friend translated into Chinese. Sadly I have forgotten to ask the man who did it for me to tell me the meaning of the single signs.

Here you can have a look at the name in latin signs, the Chinese characters and the sound of the syllables:

http://imageshack.us.../file0001kx.jpg

Could you please tell me some meanings for each of these signs?

Thanks in advance for your efforts! :-)

Joerg

[skylee]

It says 蜜丽杨, pronounced Mi Li Yang. 蜜 means honey, 丽 means beauty/beautiful, 杨 means poplar and is also a surname. Take a look at this -> http://www.mdbg.net/chindict/chindict.php?page=worddict&wdrst=0&wdqb=%E8%9C%9C%E4%B8%BD%E6%9D%A8

IMHO this is not a very good transliteration. But it is not too bad either.

[Joergi]

Thanks for your response!

I have to protect the man who did the transliteration for me: It was at a China Day in Germany. He needed under a minute to do it and told me that his special area in fact was not Chinese, but Japanese. However, no Chinese co-worker was there at this time, so he was the one to do it. I guess taking this into account, it is not too bad, right? ;-)

What would you do differently?

If I understood it correctly, you could just change the sign, which you do not like and leave the rest. Miriam is a name for a female. So I think "honey" and "beauty" are not bad, right?

Would you change "poplar" (杨)? What would you take instead?

[Lu]

That depends what you want to use this translation for.

- For a tattoo: just don't, instead get the name in a nice Latin font or get a meaningful picture.

- For Miriam to use when she goes to study/do business in China: perhaps 李杨, you loose the mi but are left with a working Chinese name. (I know a Chinese woman with this name actually.)

- For a piece of calligraphy to put on the wall: just keep this name, it's not entirely a regular Chinese name but it doesn't have any weird or negative meaning either and it sounds close to her real name.

[Joergi]

Hi Lu,

it is not for business or a tattoo (for lifetime), but just to write it on the front cover of a birthday card. Thanks for the info that I should make the name shorter and maybe better pick a "real" Chinese name. I'll see, which one I take; I still like the idea of having the sillables close to the real name...