My name in Pinyin

[Casusknaxus]

Hello guys,

I'm ethnic Vietnamese and wanted to know how my name's correctly written in Chinese considering the name system there.

My given name is Thien Nam. Thien is the same as tian 天 , which means heaven I think and Nam is the same as nan 南 , which is the South.

My question is, whether I can just use both signs as they're and put them next together , like <surname> 天南? Or are both signs for the given name written differently as they're because of the name system?

Hope you get what I mean , thanks

[skylee]

"<surname> 天南" is how the name is written in Chinese (not Pinyin). If your surname is, say, 李, the full name 李天南. If yout surname is 阮, then the full name is 阮天南.

[fanglu]

And in pinyin it would be: [surname] Tiannan.

[Lu]

Or even Lǐ Tiānnán (fill in your actual surname for Lǐ).

[Casusknaxus]

Thanks for the replies, I'm sorry for confusing Chinese characters and Pinyin  .

I've got another question, this one 楠 also means Nan. I have a Chinese friend, whose name is Nan and it's written with this character. So what's the difference between 南 and 楠? What's does it mean, if there's the tiny little character in front of 南? Does it mean something completely different and also in the name itself?

 

[fanglu]

The pronunciation (in Mandarin) is the same, but the meaning is different.

南 is south

楠 is a type of tree (Phoebe zhennan according to google)