Author question about Chinese characters that make up a name

[JamesKDecker]

Hello, I am an author of Science Fiction, and my current series (The Burn Zone and the upcoming Fallout) take place in a sort of futuristic, alternate reality China. The protagonist's name is Xiao-Xing Shao, and I am considering having another character in the story saddle her with a nickname. Before I do though I want to make sure this is something that might actually happen.

In playing with online tools, I see the most frequent characters I get for her name Xiao-Xing is:

小星

...which is translated as 'Little Star'. Would it also be fair to depict Xiao-Xing as:

小猩

...which is translated (at least with the tool I've been using) as 'Little Ape'?

Thanks in advance to anyone who can help!

James

[laoCcai]

晓馨 is good choice i think, if you don't mind changing her name to Xiao-Xin.

馨 means a good smell, and Chinese people usually uses 晓 in their names.

But if you insist on using Xing, maybe 杏 (a kind of flower) or 兴 (could be translated as rising) is better.

BTW, Xiao-Xin(g) sounds like 小心 (means 'be careful!' or 'watch out') in Chinese, i suggest you only use Xin(g) for her nickname.

[macshi]

小星 is translated as 'Little Star'

小猩 is translated as 'Little Ape'

星 (or 星星）means：star。猩（or猩猩) means ape.

but i think 小猩 is an unusual nickname, most of the time, people call a guy who like a little ape as "猴子" 。

im a chinese,so sorry for my terrible english.

[Lu]

You could perhas use 猩猩 (Xingxing, pronounced exactly the same as 星星) as a nickname, meaning gorilla. This is a bit mean.

Another note on names: as you perhaps already know, in Chinese, the family name comes before the given name, so your protagonist would write her name Shao Xiaoxing. Also, according to the rules of pinyin, her name should be written Shao Xiaoxing rather than Xiao-Xing. You can read more about spelling rules in Chinese names on the pinyin.info page, under 2.3.