Mandarin speakers please help

[Doug Gee]

For a piece of fiction I'm writing, I'm looking for Chinese girl's name with a tonal pronunciation, meaning that if it isn't spoken in the correct tone, it means something completely different. Perhaps the name can mean several different things depending upon the tone it's spoken in.

Please feel free to suggest something funny, or not funny.

Thank you very much.

Doug

[imron]

A female job applicant at the company I used to work for, listed her name on her C.V. in pinyin only - Cao Xiaomei. Never found out what the characters were (probably 曹晓梅 or something ), but the pinyin name caused quite a bit of a chuckle because in different tones it could mean something like 'f*ck the young girl'.

For reference, the characters/tones are

曹 Cáo - a surname

晓 xiǎo - Dawn/daybreak

梅 méi - Plum/plum blossom

vs

肏 cào - F*ck (often written as 操)

小 xiǎo - small/little/young

妹 mèi - younger sister, but when combined with 小, it can be a general term referring to a younger girl.

[Kenny同志]

Imron, I am afraid it takes unimaginable atrocious pronunciation to sound like that when one is trying to say 曹晓梅.

If the OP is looking for some names that have strong comical effects due to their homophones, it won’t go amiss to take a look at these:

List of most funny Chinese names

[renzhe]

Imron, I am afraid it takes unimaginable atrocious pronunciation to sound like that when one is trying to say 曹晓梅.

But they only had the pinyin without tone marks. Even today, imron doesn't know what the correct characters were.

And if you see it written as "Cao Xiaomei", it is an unfortunate connotation. You would know the pronunciation of the surname Cao, of course, but it still looks odd when written like that.

[xiaocai]

@ kenny,

I think OP wanted girl's names only. Personally I find 朱逸群 (猪一群) quite amusing.

[Kenny同志]

Thanks for your comment, Renzhe. I knew that Imron was just trying to give a possible example. My point is that the chance of a native speaker sounding like cao4xiao3mei4 while trying to say 曹晓梅 is almost zero. Therefore, it’s probably unwise for the OP to use it.

@xiaocai

Yeah, that's a good one. hehe.

[lingo-ling]

Reminds me of a student of mine from Taiwan who went to study in the US: her name was I-Yung Ho.

[Doug Gee]

Imron -- that is a funny one. And that's for breaking it down.

And I-Yung Ho is priceless.

Big thanks to you all!

[imron]

@Kenny, it was only the pinyin written without the tones and in fact it was a native speaker co-worker who showed it to me and said ha-ha you should look at this.

My point is that the chance of a native speaker sounding like cao4xiao3mei4 while trying to say 曹晓梅 is almost zero. Therefore, it’s probably unwise for the OP to use it.

But this is why it works so well. It's a normal name that native speakers won't mispronounce or make incorrect connotations about, but at a guess, I don't think it's going to be native speakers mispronouncing this name in whatever story the OP is writing (why would native speakers mispronounce tones), but rather non-native speakers who have no real idea about tones, and who will inadvertently be saying the wrong ones.

[Kenny同志]

I don't think it's going to be native speakers mispronouncing this name in whatever story the OP is writing (why would native speakers mispronounce tones), but rather non-native speakers who have no real idea about tones, and who will inadvertently be saying the wrong ones.

You're right. I hadn't thought that way.

[Lu]

Somewhat late and not entirely ontopic, but I can't resist: I heard of a Taiwanese guy named 施逸正. Looks perfectly nice, sounds like 失意症. Poor guy.