The good person of Szechwan

[cloudsquall88]

I need to learn what the meaning of each character's name in "The good person of Szechwan" is.

The problem is I don't even know how the names would be written in chinese. Reading from Wikipedia, their names would be these in romanization, but I can't be sure.

Shen te, Shui ta, Wang, Yang Sun, Lin to, Mi Chu (or Mi Tzu), Shu Fu , Shin. Also if there is a meaning for Szechwan (Se Tchouan? , Se Chuan? ), I would really like to know.

Best regards, happy to have become a member of the forums.

[renzhe]

With a bit of help from Chinese wikipedia:

沈德: Shen Te (pinyin: Shen De)

水塔: Shui Ta (Shui Ta)

楊森: Yang Sun (Yang Sen)

林投: Lin To (Lin Tou)

密枝: Mi Chu (Mi Zhi)

蘇福: Shu Fu (Su Fu)

申太太: Madam Shin (Shen taitai)

[Lu]

Sichuan, in the past also written as Szechuan (or Ssu-ch'uan, or other transliterations) is the name of a Chinese province, 四川 in Chinese. Literally its name means 'four rivers'.

[cloudsquall88]

Thanks a lot for your responses. Now could you point me to some sites where I could find the translations for those characters? I have tried many , but due to my lack of chinese knowledge I can't be sure. I'd prefer to use your references.

[renzhe]

mdbg.net

nciku.com

But bear in mind that translating surnames doesn't make much sense. Today they are simply surnames, like surnames "Taylor" or "Smith".