Comments on: How and why to find a suitable Chinese name

By: 卫诗雨

卫诗雨 — Fri, 08 Oct 2021 21:13:03 +0000

When I moved to China at ten years old, my first Chinese teacher assigned me a phonetic transliteration of my English name: 莉亚 . It wasn’t bad, certainly not the worst name one could end up with by transliterating. However, after living in China for several years, and entering teenhood, I decided I wanted an authentic Chinese name. I decided to go with the family name my aunt had chosen, which was 卫，and I asked one of our family’s closest Chinese friends to help me come up with a personal name. I knew I wanted a name that incorporated 雨, because my English middle name is Rain, and it means a lot to me. She came up with a few options, and ultimately I chose the name 卫诗雨，which I think both pretty and fitting for my personality. Poetry, and a poet’s outlook on life, are quite appealing to me. Many of the Chinese friends I met later also told me that it was a good name, so I’m very happy with it!

By: Winston

Winston — Sat, 17 Apr 2021 06:10:10 +0000

My chinese name is 古利敏 (gǔ lì mǐn) and was given by my grandfather and I like it.
古: It means ancient/ old and is my last name.
利: It means profit/ benefit.
敏: It means sensitive/ keen

By: Wai

Wai — Sat, 24 Jun 2017 13:30:21 +0000

In reply to Emily Liedel. 李煕怡 is a good name. Btw, searching this name on Facebook won't return you a lot of result since the Chinese government has blocked Facebook!

By: Wai

Wai — Sat, 24 Jun 2017 12:59:05 +0000

In reply to Paweł. 亞 doesn't always has negative meeting, sometimes we use 亞X to express "over X" if we use 亞 as verb. E.g. 亞男 means "win men", which will be use as girl's name.

By: Ursula Kallio (高思俐)

Ursula Kallio (高思俐) — Sat, 05 Mar 2016 07:23:42 +0000

After about two months of consideration, my Chinese friends in San Francisco and I devised 高思俐 for me based on personality traits, and 高 is a close Kallio sound match. Some Chinese people really like it, a Chinese guy next to me on a flight said flat out he did not like the name and that it sounded foreign, multiple Chinese people have told me it sounds very Chinese, and I am still observing people’s responses to it. Most are positive. Open to native people’s honest impressions.

By: 李巧儿

李巧儿 — Mon, 02 Feb 2015 23:52:55 +0000

My English name is Kelsey which, as it turns out, Chinese people really hate pronouncing. Eventually someone decided that my name would be 巧儿 and that was what I was called for the next full year, even when I left China. The next year I began learning Chinese and my teacher gave me my surname 李 so now my full name is 李巧儿 which I find extremely hard to pronounce in terms of getting the tones correct but I think that after four years I’ve finally gotten it down. These days I’m actually more comfortable with people refering to me using my Chinese name than I am when they use my English name! 巧 ssupposedly means skilful or clever =]

By: Hauke

Hauke — Mon, 02 Feb 2015 19:36:16 +0000

I got my name from my first hostfamily in Taiwan. They decided to give me their family name and chose the first name as close as possible to the pronuncation of my German Name. So my name is 楊浩克. The only thing they didnt tell me that the Hulk a filmcharacter had the same name, so most of my classmates laught when I told them my name. Actually I am really content with my name because the characters seem to have a good meaning and at least everyone remembers this name after smiling about.

By: Robert R.

Robert R. — Mon, 02 Feb 2015 19:35:27 +0000

My last name starts with “Ro”, just like my 1st, so the
3-character transliteration suggested by my wife (to-be at the time) would be 羅羅伯 (Luó Luóbó), and I just don’t like the Luo sound (really the ‘o’ sound) for my name, so having it in triplicate was right out.

I decided to take my wife’s surname (鍾 zhōng), and just looking for a name with initial sounds of “R” and “B” for the given name.

Our search was my wife looking through a dictionary as we were in a taxi through Taipei. One of the suggestions was “Reibai”, but to close to “rabbi” for me.
Ended up with 瑞邦 (ruìbāng), which I’m quite happy with. Alas, I’ve had little opportunity to use it, even for the 5 years I was in Taiwan.

By: Emily Liedel

Emily Liedel — Mon, 02 Feb 2015 19:26:50 +0000

My Chinese name is 李熙怡, and like a lot of people I had a very circuitous route to getting it. My first Chinese name was a transliteration of ‘Emily’ and sounded awful, it wasn’t until years later that I asked a friend to help me come up with a better one. My sister had gotten the surname 李 when she studied Chinese, and it seemed appropriate for us to have the same surname. I’ve gotten a lot of compliments on the name 熙怡， but interestingly enough I haven’t found many Chinese people with the same personal name. A social media search a while ago revealed only one hit, and it looked like a little girl (like 4 years old) somewhere in rural China) whose parents had posted a picture of their daughter on-line.

By: Lella

Lella — Sun, 01 Feb 2015 16:16:22 +0000

My chinese name is 龙白蒂,given by a teacher at 厦门大学.
My surname is Lombardi, so it sounds quite similar to the original,but some chinese people say it sounds like a male name, others say it reminds of 白帝城 (from 早发白帝城 of 李白)so not a lucky name, someone even called me 白兰地！What can I say, I got used to it and I like it.