中文名字 Choosing a Chinese Name

[SarahBeth93]

嗨，大家好!

I've had some help choosing a Chinese name for myself but I am torn between two options. I would really appreciate any thoughts or feedback on them!

Option 1 - 江梅花 (Jiāng Méihuā)

Pros:

Beautiful meaning (River/Plum Blossom)

The number of strokes per character, and all possible combinations of strokes across characters, are all lucky numbers.

The elements water and wood have a generating relationship

Option 2 - 王江离 (Wáng Jiānglí)

Pros:

Quoted from line 6 of Li Sao 离骚

帝高阳之苗裔兮，朕皇考曰伯庸。
摄提贞于孟陬兮，惟庚寅吾以降。
皇览揆余初度兮，肇锡余以嘉名：
名余曰正则兮，字余曰灵均。
纷吾既有此内美兮，又重之以修能。
扈江离与辟芷兮，纫秋兰以为佩。
汨余若将不及兮，恐年岁之不吾与。
朝搴阰之木兰兮，夕揽洲之宿莽。

Possible cons:

Not all of the number of strokes per character or combinations are lucky numbers.

The elements water and fire are in an overcoming relationship.

如果你有时间的话，我想听听你的意见。

谢谢!

[xinoxanu]

Mmm

 

I personally like 江梅花 better. It has a good ring to it, but it can sound pretentious... especially if you mess up the pronunciation 哈哈

 

I always wonder, though, why do foreigners choose their names by themselves? Ask a Chinese person instead! My name was chosen by my now ex-girlfriend and it has more value than anything else I could have chosen myself.

[markhavemann]

https://youcanlearnchinese.mandarincompanion.com/episodes/35-dont-be-the-girl-with-the-name-radiohead

 

This has some good advice in it as far as I remember. 

[Lu]

2 hours ago, xinoxanu said:

I always wonder, though, why do foreigners choose their names by themselves? Ask a Chinese person instead! My name was chosen by my now ex-girlfriend and it has more value than anything else I could have chosen myself.

Because not everyone has a Chinese girlfriend at their disposal at the moment they need their name. Many people pick their name fairly early in their studies, well before they know Chinese people they have a deeper relationship with that would qualify them to pick a name. I got my name from my Chinese teachers. I'm happy with my name and it is better than something I could have come up with myself at that point, but it's not very original or personalised. Had these forums existed back in 2001, I might have asked here.

 

@SarahBeth93:

江梅花 seems a bit 土 to me, unsophisticated. It's good enough a name, but something that would be picked by parents who haven't had a lot of schooling.

王江离 is more original and it's always nice to have a name taken from a poem. I can't say anything about the meaning, I don't know the poem well enough.

[xinoxanu]

39 minutes ago, Lu said:

Many people pick their name fairly early in their studies

 

That's why I think it's better if the name you pick, or are given, has some sort of value. If the OP has that in mind then no problem, but don't just pick something because you have to, specially early in your studies, since a Chinese name is not necessary at all to begin with (and FYI: Japanese language learners don't get a Japanese name at all) so until the time comes you can use a transliteration of your native name. That's what I did and didn't have any issues interacting with Chinese people.

 

Maybe I am too much of a romantic, but I believe that a name is something you have to live with and you shouldn't change it after it's set in stone, so better not to mess it up to start with. I know many Chinese learners that picked something by themselves and later changed it... but it's somewhat weird and they themselves know it.

[Lu]

Good to hear your method worked well for you. Many other people follow different paths, including the OP, for good reasons of their own.

[Dawei3]

3 hours ago, Lu said:

not everyone has a Chinese girlfriend

I've found Chinese are very open to helping foreigners pick Chinese names.  Someone I met at talk at Wharton business school suggested my last name for me (I had a 1st name at that time).  I checked with friends and they agreed it was good choice.  Notably, the person I met at Wharton was hardly even a friend - just a professional contact.  However, as those who post here likely have found, Chinese love foreigners who learn Chinese and want to help & encourage them.  

 

Hence, you don't need a deep relationship with someone to pick a name.  However, it's good to get several people's perspectives (or post the proposed name here for feedback, like you have done).  . 

[Demonic_Duck]

I wouldn't worry too much about stroke counts and so on — even traditionalist 老太太s who care about such things when helping name their own grandchildren are unlikely to go to the trouble of counting strokes of other people's names.

 

Personally I prefer 王江离, simply because it's a bit more unique. From what I could find online, it looks like 江离 in the poem is another way of writing 江蓠, which is another name for 蘼芜, a type of fragrant plant. You could consider the version with 草字头 as an alternative, if that makes the stroke count more auspicious.

[道艺]

personally #1 sounds better simply because I know so many 王s. My chinese name was also given to me by a teacher, '罗道艺', with the given name relating to my character/interests. I never remembered to ask why she chose that last name.

 

Fastforward a few years and I was having dinner with my gf's family, one of which was her uncle, and he brought up a good point - using the surname 罗 is almost as if I'm jumping in the family. It would feel just as weird to me as if some Chinese guy were to come over to the US and start calling himself 'Joey O'Connor'. I have since mostly dropped the last name and just refer to myself as '道艺' haha. 

 

Just some food for thought when thinking about your 姓

[amytheorangutan]

40 minutes ago, 道艺黄帝 said:

Fastforward a few years and I was having dinner with my gf's family, one of which was her uncle, and he brought up a good point - using the surname 罗 is almost as if I'm jumping in the family. It would feel just as weird to me as if some Chinese guy were to come over to the US and start calling himself 'Joey O'Connor'. I have since mostly dropped the last name and just refer to myself as '道艺'

This makes sense. Since normally people use chinese name I assume only in conversation and not really changing it in documents and stuff, family name is not really necessary unless the family name is a really good one that has personal meaning and/or happens to sound like your actual last name.

[Demonic_Duck]

2 hours ago, 道艺黄帝 said:

using the surname 罗 is almost as if I'm jumping in the family

 

Interesting take. If you like the idea of surnames showing some sort of lineage, you can always choose a 姓 that's transliteratively close to your surname or your mother's maiden name.

 

2 hours ago, 道艺黄帝 said:

It would feel just as weird to me as if some Chinese guy were to come over to the US and start calling himself 'Joey O'Connor'.

 

I guess the discrepancy in how learners choose names is partly due to how each language handles surnames and transliteration. English is alphabetical, so it's easy enough to just use the pinyin, even if people butcher the pronunciation. "Transliteration" into Chinese, meanwhile, necessarily means choosing characters. In addition, a naturalized name has to fit that specific form of 1- (or rarely 2-) character 姓 + 1- or 2-character 名. Naturalized 姓s are essentially a closed class in Chinese, whereas in the anglosphere, surnames tend to be very diverse and come from all over the place.

 

Of course, you don't have to choose naturalized name at all if you don't want to. 玛丽 or 约翰 are just as easy for Chinese speakers to pronounce as 郭鹏 or 李晓悦.

[xinoxanu]

Keep in mind that you can also pick a name that has only one character and then either add a 小 at the start or duplicate the character. Chinese people love this kind of stuff because they find it cute and then you can avoid the surname hassle mentioned above or your name sounding too forced/fake. If you are wondering, yes, this also works at a formal or professional level because the Chinese couldn't care less. 

 

In my case both my real name and Chinese one have two syllables/characters, but I mostly go by the last one: 兰, which ends up being 兰兰 or 小兰. Now that I am studying Japanese it's even better because 兰, or rather 蘭 in Japanese, is an actual name (Ran). It's kinda girly both in Chinese or Japanese but I am fine with it because it's cute and it's actually the hypocorism of my native name, so it also works for official documents.

[SarahBeth93]

Hi everyone!

Thanks so much for all of the helpful comments! I'm learning so much from this process.

I was also wondering if you might be able to give feedback on a more or less transliterated name.

I had been hesitant to go this route because my name can feel pretty run-of-the-mill in English, but it is the most true to who I am and I think I'm starting to really like the transliteration, if it's free from unfortunate connotations. 

How would 戴撒拉 (Dài Sālā) come across?

[Demonic_Duck]

If you want to go the transliteration route, it doesn't make much sense to use the 姓、名 format IMO. 撒拉 is fine, but names like Sarah already have pretty established transliterations, in this case 莎拉. So you'd have 莎拉·罗宾逊 or whatever your surname is (but the surname would rarely be used anyway, so you don't need to worry much about that).

[Lu]

The problem with transliterating the name Sarah is that it's very hard to come up with a transliteration that doesn't sound like 沙拉, meaning 'salad'. So I would advise against taking this route.

[Demonic_Duck]

霞拉 or 雪拉, perhaps. But then you're already leaning back toward a naturalized name, so you might as well go the whole way and have 戴霞莉 or 戴雪琳 or something (disclaimer - not saying those are great names, just examples).

[xinoxanu]

@Lu beat me to it.

 

The same applies to 莎拉, which shares pronunciation with 杀了 and it's obviously not great... but then again we are nitpicking here and native speakers will "probably" understand that your name is Sarah.

 

"Probably"...

[SarahBeth93]

Wow, thanks so much for all of the feedback! I'm sincerely grateful for your help.

 

Since posting, I was actually fortunate enough to have a friend's mom who lives in Taiwan pull out her dictionary and suggest "撒拉”。Since it's pronounced "sālā" and not "shālā" do you think that helps get around the issues with homophones 杀了 and 沙拉?

 

She also mentioned that the character in the Torah/Bible named Sarah is translated as 撒拉 throughout. I would love to hear your thoughts on if/how that changes your impression of the name!

[Lu]

3 hours ago, SarahBeth93 said:

"撒拉”。Since it's pronounced "sālā" and not "shālā" do you think that helps get around the issues with homophones 杀了 and 沙拉?

Unfortunately, no. It still sounds like salad. 'Sa' and 'sha' sound almost the same and people in many regions of China, and also in Taiwan, don't hear or pronounce the difference. In context, it's usually not a problem: if a person is listening to a story from the Bible or a news item about an American or European country, they'll get that the Shala or Sala they hear about is a name. And Biblical Sarah and foreign Sarahs generally don't have much of a choice anyway. But you do, and to avoid a lifetime of occasional salad jokes, I'd advise you to pick something else.

[Demonic_Duck]

I really think the 撒拉/莎拉/沙拉 thing is overstated. Sarah is a common enough name that it won't seem weird. And heck, Cantonese Wikipedia even lists a 莎拉 who goes by the English name Salad.

 

Even more overstated is this:

  

12 hours ago, xinoxanu said:

莎拉 ... shares pronunciation with 杀了

 

I mean sure, if lā is the same as le. But in that case, 大 = 的、掌 = 蒸、含 = 恨, and so on... a ton of Chinese words would suddenly become indistinguishable.

 

6 hours ago, SarahBeth93 said:

She also mentioned that the character in the Torah/Bible named Sarah is translated as 撒拉 throughout.

 

Interesting, didn't know that. Maybe because it's a transliteration of a Hebrew name, not an English one... but then again, the English name is also a transliteration of that same name ¯\_(ツ)_/¯