Tones for Proper Names?

[Craig Turner]

I have tried some searches on this topic but was unable to find anything.

So: If I come across a proper name in Mandarin (traditional is what I'm studying), how can I know how it sounds (the tone)? For example, as you native speakers know, there are families of "styles" in various forms of Chinese martial arts. How can I determine the tone of, say, the "Chen" family style of Taiji, or "Wu"? Even if I know the character, it is possible that it has tone variants.

How do native Chinese determine the tones of a family or given name?

Much thanks from this newbie,

And what a wonderful site full of interesting information!

Best,

Craig

[Quest]

Most family names are well known and only pronounced in one way. The fact that they are proper names does not change their pronunciations. Although there are multi-tone characters, tones are generally not "determined"; each character has its own assigned tone or tones that never change. For example, the character 陈(chen) must be pronounced with a second tone and second tone only.

[wushijiao]

When buying a dictionary, I'd suggest just looking through it real quick to make sure they included surnames, because many dictionaries don't, which is extremely annoying.

[skylee]

I would think surnames with more than one pronunciation/tone are not common. I can only think of a few. For example, Mr 樂 can be Mr Le4 or Mr Yue4, and Mr 翟 can be Mr Zhai2 or Mr Di2. Also some words when used as surnames are pronounced differently, e.g. 任 is usaually ren4 but is ren2 when it is a surname. But on the whole usually there is one pronunciation/tone for one surname.

[Altair]

I can understand what has been said about surnames, but is this really true of given names as well? Wouldn't there be lots of 破音字 to worry about?

What about the "given" name of someone like 楊澄甫, who was a famous practitioner of Yang Style Taijiquan? (By the way, I think that 澄甫 was actually his 字, rather than his 名.) Does 澄甫 have any meaning by itself, or is it a "common" name that people would generally know how to pronounce?

When I first tried to be sure how to pronounce this name, I was stumped by the fact that 澄 has three pronunciations: cheng2, deng4, and deng1. I was also surprised to learn that 甫 was pronounced with a neutral tone and wondered how one could know this simply by reading the characters themselves.

From what I understand, this man's name is pronounced Yang2 Cheng2 fu5; however, I did once run across a book in which the second character of his name was transliterated with the "deng" reading. I found this extremely surprising, since the book was written by someone who appeared to be a native speaker of Chinese and Yang Chengfu is among the most famous practitioners of Yang Style Taijiquan.

[39degN]

I can add some:

区 ou1 (seems many HKnese named this)

尉迟 yu4 chi2 (如尉迟恭)

綦 xi4 (should be qi2, but one of my college classmates named this claimed that it pronounced xi4)

仇 qiu2

解 xie4 (如解小东)

单 shan4 (如单雄信)

朴 piao2 (mainly Korean-Chinese)

查 zha1 (如查良镛=金庸 )

[39degN]

wondered how one could know this simply by reading the characters themselves.

Generally, you can just use the most common pronunciation of the character, as long as the name has no special meaning or the name owner doesnt disagree with it.

[xiaoxiajenny]

Hey,

Hopefully this can help with something or you can try

www.adsotrans.com as well.

Cheers,

--Jenny

王Wang2 陈Chen2 李Li3 张Zhang1 刘Liu2 杨Yang2 黄Huang2 吴Wu2 林Lin2 周Zhou1

叶Ye4 赵Zhao4 吕Lv3 徐Xu2 孙Sun1 朱Zhu1 高Gao1 马Ma3 梁Liang2 郭Guo1

何He2 郑Zheng4 胡Hu2 蔡Cai4 曾Zeng1 佘She2 邓Deng4 沈Shen3 谢Xie4 唐Tang2

许Xu3 罗Luo2 袁Yuan2 冯Feng2 宋Song4 苏Su1 曹Cao2 陆Lu4 麦Mai4 董Dong3

于Yu2 韩Han2 任Ren2 蒋Jiang3 顾Gu4 钟Zhong1 方Fang1 杜Du4 丁Ding1 姚Yao2

潘Pan1 姜Jiang1 谭Tan2 邱Qiu1 肖Xiao1 金Jin1 贾Jia3 田Tian2 崔Cui1 程Cheng2

余Yu2 魏Wei4 薛Xue1 戴Dai4 范Fan4 卢Lu2 洪Hong2 侯Hou2 夏Xia4 白Bai2

贺He4 钱Qian2 庄Zhuang1 邹Zou1 汪Wang1 史Shi3 路Lu4 石Shi2 彭Peng2 龚Gong1

秦Qin2 廖Liao4 黎Li2 施Shi1 付Fu4 赖Lai4 江Jiang1 邵Shao4 毛Mao2 邢Xing2

倪Ni2 阎Yan2 严Yan2 常Chang2 康Kang1 牛Niu2 万Wan4 陶Tao2 孟Meng4 葛Ge3

尹Yin3 雷Lei2 盛Sheng4 樊Fan2 齐Qi2 傅Fu4 柯Ke1 龙Long2 曲Qu1 郝Hao3

关Guan1 纪Ji3 温Wen1 乔Qiao2 汤Tang1 殷Yin1 代Dai4 段Duan4 兰Lan2 韦Wei2

毕Bi4 裴Pei2 章Zhang1 颜Yan2 阮Ruan3 俞Yu2 翁Weng1 孔Kong3 凌Ling2 武Wu3

文Wen2 季Ji4 熊Xiong2 安An1 鲁Lu3 祝Zhu4 房Fang2 尤You2 伍Wu3 焦Jiao1

井Jing3 柳Liu3 米Mi3 向Xiang4 骆Luo4 莫Mo4 童Tong2 谈Tan2 芦Lu2 苗Miao2

耿Geng3 宫Gong1 虞Yu2 柴Chai2 易Yi4 奚Xi1 霍Huo4 申Shen1 尚Shang4 佟Tong2

符Fu2 庞Pang2 岳Yue4 辛Xin1 聂Nie4 翟Zhai2 左Zuo3 单Shan4 蒲Pu2 包Bao1

牟Mou2 解Xie4 穆Mu4 漆Qi1 欧Ou1 游You2 景Jing3 闵Min3 谷Gu3 卞Bian4 东Dong1

费Fei4 屠Tu2 Zhan1 储Chu3 党Dang3 丛Cong2 鲍Bao4 隋Sui2 艾Ai4 车Che1 卫Wei4

覃Qin2 苻Fu2 华Hua4 宁Ning4 冉Ran3 萧Xiao1 戚Qi1 项Xiang4

[trevelyan]

Adso won't be much help for traditional characters, but it does have about 350 family names tagged so might be of some help to anyone familiar with simplified. You can access them directly by going to http://www.adsotrans.com/adso/unidict.pl and typing "NAME" in the box marked FLAG.

Here are two relatively unintuitive ones:

那 is na1

厂 is an1.

[skylee]

朴 piao2 (mainly Korean-Chinese)

Yes my dictionary says so (it is piu4 in Cantonese). But it seems that many people (including me) pronounce it as pu3 (pok8 in Cantonese).

查 zha1 (如查良镛=金庸 )

Again we pronounce it as 茶 rather than 渣 (well I guess most people would prefer 茶 to 渣 ).

Such bad habits, disregarding the correct pronunciations.

[in_lab]

What about stubble (of beard) : 鬍碴? Would you pronounce it hu2 zha1 or hu2 cha2 (beard tea)? The dictionary says the second one.

[zhwj]

My favorite example is 镡, which as a surname has the pronunciations Chán, Tán, and Xín. Only the xín pronunciation has a meaning aside from its use as a name, however.

I think people learn to live with being called the wrong name, much in the same way as people with the name 侯 get used to others writing their name as 候, or people anywhere stop correcting habitual mispronunciations after a while.

You sure on that link, trevelyan? Interesting that ADSO give 查 as Chá.

[trevelyan]

Interesting that ADSO give 查 as Chá.

It *did*....

Are you sure about the multiple pronunciations of 镖? The 现代汉语规范词典 shows it as biao1, with 镡 listing for both xin2 and tan2. I can't seem to find chan2 in the same dictionary, but its a small dictionary and probably wouldn't list alternate family names.

[zhwj]

Yep, you're right, trevelyan. I hit the wrong key for the bottom right element and in the small font here it's hard to tell the difference. Thanks for the heads-up; I've edited it so as not to mislead.

This page lists eight surnames that have multiple pronunciations: 樂﹑覃﹑鐔﹑蓋﹑召﹑郇﹑隗﹑賁 (翟 mentioned above is absent here), and lists Tan and Chan for 鐔, but no Xin.

The writer's opinion of how to deal with pronunciation is:

這裡有個原則﹕“姓從主人”﹐就是說﹐應該按照本家族世代相傳的讀音﹔萬不可自以為 是﹐錯讀錯認。（在其他國家﹐別的語言中姓氏讀音也有類似的情況。）

"There's a principle: 'A name follows it's owner.' Which is to say, you should follow the historical pronunciation of that family, and never hold your own view to be infallible, mispronouncing and misidentifying. (In other countries and other languages there are similar situations surrounding the pronunciation of surnames)"

I'm still getting a 404 on that uniview.pl link.