What is your Chinese name?

[wix]

I assume most people here have a Chinese name of some kind.

The first Chinese name I had was 芮 大 衛 . It was given to me by my Chinese teacher in Australia. It has some major problems. The biggest one being that many people cannot correctly pronounce the surname which is rui4 (most people guess nei4). Also the last character is written differently in simplified and traditional characters, so if I write it in traditional characters most people in China can't read it. I think the simplified character for wei is downright ugly and meaningless.

To avert all these problems I chose the following name for myself: 魏 明 智 . I like the meaning and it has none of the problems mentioned above. Also the name Rui Dawei makes it very obvious I am not Chinese, but if someone sees the name Wei Mingzhi they cannot tell that I am a foreigner. I still use the sinicised version of David (i.e. Dawei) when I meet people and chat to them on the street though.

[andreabt]

I have had several Chinese names, most of them variations of the same given name. Of course, there is the generic Chinese translation of my English name which amounts to 6 or 7 characters, which got old after about 2 uses. Then a friend gave me the name Anqi, which apparently means angel, because it is similar to my English name, Andrea. When I introduced myself, some people were confused, thinking my family name was "An", so I gave myself the family name of Bai, because the first letter of my last name (then) was B, which meant I was Bai Anqi. THEN I married a Chinese man whose family name was Tian, (by the way...how are you getting characters in your post??), so I changed my Chinese name to Tian Anqi. I'm actually not crazy about having a name that means "Angel" (apologies if there are any Angels reading this!), but it's what everyone knows me as, so I'm stuck with it! Thankfully, our family name is "Field", not "Heaven"...that would be pretty weird to have a name that basically meant "Heavenly Angel"

Andrea "Tian Anqi"

[roddy]

Moving to Society - it's not really the right topic, but more people will see it here, and it could be an interesting thread.

I've never had a Chinese name, other than phonetic versions of my English name. I do technically have one at the moment as my work invented one for me and have used it on my residents permit, but I couldn't tell you what it is.

Roddy

[andreabt]

Wix, I also wanted to tell you that "rui" (any tone) is probably the single hardest Chinese syllable for *me* to pronounce! Doesn't have anything to do with wondering if it's nei or rui...I just have trouble wrapping my mouth around that initial r, and making the rest of it come out right (and not just say "ray" which I don't think is exactly it)

Not exactly related to names, a bit tangential...are you going to be strict about that Roddy?

Andrea[/code]

[roddy]

No, but feel free to start a 'what the hardest Chinese sound' topic in Speaking and Listening . . .

Roddy

[Guest mirela_violeta]

My first chinese teacher invented some names for us starting from our real names, or rather from the first letter. My chinese name is Dai Mei as it comes from David Mirela. If you translate it it means to wear plum flower...anyway I for a year or so I've always forgotten how to write Dai. I wonder if it s really a chinese name or just invented. I guess mei is used,because they love meihua but dai...have you ever heard anyone with a name like that?to

[JoH]

My first teacher in taiwan 'named' me He2 Qiao2 An1, just because it kind of sounds like my english name. Qiao An seems to be the standard way of transliterating my real name (Joanne), which I've never really understood as it doesn't sound anything like it and there are loads of zhou's to choose from. So a chinese friend suggested I use the boat Zhou1 - He2 Zhou1 An1. My only worry is that when people hear it they might think I mean the rice congee zhou1... (congee of peace?)

[Guest jinshan]

I was sick of friends, colleagues and students making a hash job at 'sinicising' my name, so took a chinese name which is completely unconnected with it. I admit it sounds more like a place name than a person, but I've met at least one chinese person with exactly the same name, plus it has the advantages (for me) of being easy to pronounce and write, snappy and memorable!

Jinshan (金山)

[TSkillet]

Well, my parents gave me my Chinese name (刘德伦) - which has the unfortunate quality of being almost 刘德华 - prompting millions and milions of questions and jokes about me being related to Andy Lau.

[roddy]

I split the posts on foreign names into a new topic in the Grammar / Vocab Forum (confucius's diatribe about Hawaii and a couple of replies). I didn't realise that this would delete them from this thread, though. Apologies.

Roddy

[sudasana]

I was sick of friends' date=' colleagues and students making a hash job at 'sinicising' my name, so took a chinese name which is completely unconnected with it. I admit it sounds more like a place name than a person, but I've met at least one chinese person with exactly the same name, plus it has the advantages (for me) of being easy to pronounce and write, snappy and memorable!

Jinshan (金山)[/quote']

My English name (Gregory) is notoriously hard for native Chinese speakers to pronounce, so I chose a completely unrelated Chinese name too. 达根 da2gen1 means "to achieve the root" or "to get to the root of things" which has a Buddhist connotation, but I'm thinking of using a different moniker when I go to atheist Mainland.

[smithsgj]

OUr son's half uk half taiwanese. We wanted him to have one name, not two (visions of identity crises in later life) but we also didn't want the transliteration problems referred to in the previous post (and ref).

So we came up with Owen. Owen Chen = Chen Ou-wen (european literature). We like it and it's jolly hao-ting apparently.

Also this particular name doesn't lend itself to reduplicative cannibalization, we've found. You know? Like Youyou or YuanYuan. That means you have to address Owen as Owen, not some idiotic concocted pet thing. (Do they do this in China as well as Taiwan?)

There's a story about Owen's name in his passport(s) but I'll put that up another day I think.

[jwarriner]

Luckily (or not) for me, I have a common name, John and there is a common transliteration for it in Chinese, Yuehan. So, by some I'm known as Wen Yuehan (ÎÄ Ô¼ º²).

(First time trying to enter characters on this site. Let's see if they come through.)

[Guest Anonymous]

Qiao An seems to be the standard way of transliterating my real name (Joanne), which I've never really understood as it doesn't sound anything like it and there are loads of zhou's to choose from.

Many (I would say about 80 - 90%) of foreign names, whether of people or places, were originally translated to Cantonese pronounciation. For example, Washington is "Huashengdun" in Mandarin but in Cantonese it's "Wah-sing-ton", much closer. Same with Chicago, Mandarin = "Zhijiage", Cantonese = "Chi-ga-go". Also, not all foreign names were translated from English, some, if not most are translated from their original language. Jesus in Mandarin is "Yesu" because the letter "J" actually pronounces like "Y" in Hebrew (I learned this from Indiana Jones ;-)).

[smithsgj]

True, Kulong de hua is true. LIke "cigar' why xue - jia is weird

but easy .hk is sit-ga

also dalu lao ppl sydney (in oz, =aus like wizard) = ??xi something ni right?

in .tw is xue-li y y y??? easy cos .hk is sit (sitga go sit?) ni!!!!!

[Guest Anonymous]

True' date=' Kulong de hua is true. LIke "cigar' why xue - jia is weird

but easy .hk is sit-ga

also dalu lao ppl sydney (in oz, =aus like wizard) = ??xi something ni right?

in .tw is xue-li y y y??? easy cos .hk is sit (sitga go sit?) ni!!!!![/quote']

There are some names of foreign ppl/places that were translated directly into Mandarin though. For example, Atlanta in Mandarin is "Yatelanda". I personally believe it would be even more accurate to replace the "Ya" with "A" but the Ya character looks more graceful than "A". So when translating foreign names into Chinese, there are two things to consider, the sound and the meaning of the characters chosen to represent the sounds. This however can be advantage. When you don't like someone/place, you can use the ugliest characters, but I have rarely seen that happened. Bummer :-P

[PollyWaffle]

This however can be advantage. When you don't like someone/place, you can use the ugliest characters, but I have rarely seen that happened.

yes, this works both ways. eg, a guy at my skool was called wang ke, not thinking to give himself an english name. no prizes for guessing wot everyone called him. it was ironically apt.

[Guest Anonymous]

This however can be advantage. When you don't like someone/place, you can use the ugliest characters, but I have rarely seen that happened.

yes, this works both ways. eg, a guy at my skool was called wang ke, not thinking to give himself an english name. no prizes for guessing wot everyone called him. it was ironically apt.

Ooooh... yeah... My Chinese name is Wang Weili... it's bad enough that the average American mispronounces my last name, "Weili" sounds a lot like "Willy... , you can imagine how fun my childhood was. :-)

[wix]

OUr son's half uk half taiwanese. We wanted him to have one name' date=' not two (visions of identity crises in later life) but we also didn't want the transliteration problems referred to in the previous post (and ref).

So we came up with Owen. Owen Chen = Chen Ou-wen (european literature). We like it and it's jolly hao-ting apparently.[/quote']

There are a few names I can think of that have a similar pronunciation in English and Chinese:

丽雅 (pinyin = liya) and is similar to the English name Leah. I have a friend in Taiwan with this name and she uses the English name Leah. (not sure if used the right character for "ya")

I had a student whose name was 柯丽娜 (pinyin= Ke Lina) and she used the English name Corrina.

A few more:

琳达 (pinyin=linda) English name Linda

安娜 (pinyin=anna) English name Anna

安妮 (pinyin=anni) English name Annie

安 pinyin=an English name Anne

[confucius]

Wen Di = Wendy

Shan= Shawn

Lei (The character with 3 rocks) = Rocky