Rant: Don't Butcher Chinese Names Please
psa: ying yue is an unoriginal, idiotic name.
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yaoyueyi Hi, it's me again haha XD
What do you think of these names for a modern novel?
Female: Su Meixiu, or Su Meixue (iffy about the latter one bc it sounds like beautiful snow lmao :laughing: ), Su Baibai or Su Lanlan
Male: Ling Fulei, Wei Shen or Wei Haiyun or Wei Jinhai
Thank you so much in advance!
Can SongYi be a name? What does it mean?
UnjustlyUnderpaid what's the meaning of Pinyin?
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Resplendently pinyin is the 'alphabet' of chinese.
for example... the name:
杨雨嘉. it is yáng yǔ jiā. yáng (杨) yǔ (雨) jiā (嘉) would be considered the pinyin form of the characters.
basically, when typing chinese on a keyboard, a pinyin input keyboard is used to form the characters.
pinyin is also used for chinese speakers to learn new words.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinyin <-- for more info.
Xincerely
The names Baibai and Lanlan sound really bad unless it's a nickname since (I'm assuming it's 白白 and 蓝蓝) her name literally means White-white or Blue-blue and you wouldn't really name your kid that. You should think about the meanings and keep in mind Chinese parents often name their children with attributes that they want them to have. For example, beautiful (mei 美).
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yaoyueyi i'm definitely someone who butchered Chinese names because of ignorance oops.
I currently have a character where I'm now unsure if the names I used are right. What I tend to do is google for Chinese last names, then Google Chinese first names. That being said, I think they're really wrong now lmao.
I have a few questions.
My main character's name is Yun Da Xia, while her brother and father's names are
Yun Zhang Wei and Yun Zhang Yong. I found (Zhang Wei) and (Zhang Yong) under first names and just added it on to Yun. But after looking at this post and doing some research Zhang is a surname. First question is can it be a firstname?, and if no, would it be enough to omit Zhang and have them be Yun Wei and Yun Yong?
I'm sorry if these are a lot of questions, but also, is Zhao Syaoran and Shen Huiqing a name that can be used?
Thank you so much!!
edit: honestly im super scared now about all my names so im just gonna list them here im so sorry (and yes i have a ying yue :')
Tian Yao (can I make this as Xie Tian Yao or no)
Xie Ying Yue
Xie Li Rong
Murong Heng
Xie Chan Ming
Xie Li Qiang
Huang Kang
Tian Change
I'm so sorry again for butchering Chinese names. I'll try not to do so anymore in the future.
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chonnie
I hope I can help since I am also Chinese.
First of all, Zhao Syaoran is definitely not Chinese. In Chinese, the letter "y" cannot be used as a vowel, the character, "syao" does not exist.
Zhang is indeed a Chinese surname, one of the most common in fact. It's not impossible to have "zhang" in the name since it could be a different character with the same pinyin spelling, but commonly, you don't see names with "zhang" in them as I have never heard of one.
Changing names to just Wei and Yong is fine since Wei means greatness and Yong means brave. They are real names used in society.
Your MC's name, Yun Da Xia, what I think of is 大侠 which means hero and it sounds really weird as a female name or a name in general. There are much better characters with the meaning hero to use and usually hero is not a meaning incorporated into female names.
Hope this is helpful.
BlueRhapsody Thank you very much! Syaoran was a name I found on a Chinese baby names website and now I'm super scared about everything ahahaha.
As far as my MC's name I have two questions about it:
1. Is it 'okay' to retain it as it is or is it disrespectful in any way? I currently have a few people following the novel and I'm afraid if I change it now things are gonna get weird for my readers.
2. If it's not okay, do you have any recommendations of what I could use instead? I'm really sorry to bother you!
chonnie
I honestly doubt that most people reading will know since (I assume) most people aren't ethnically Chinese, so it's not the end of the world and you don't necessarily have to change it. As for the Syaoran thing, if we're talking Mandarin, that's not a thing. IDK about Cantonese and Taiwan/Hong Kong spellings.
chonnie
If you want name suggestions, I suggest that you clarify what kind of meaning you want their name to have.
chonnie "syao" is probably some american going "how do I say 'xiao'.... oh right syao"... so if you want to have an alternative, xiaoran is a good alternative.
ughhh ying yue :sob: you have no idea how much I hate that.
but tian yao is kinda weird.
li qiang isn't my favorite.
huang kang is atrocious.
I don't get why Change is one name when you have everything else in two characters. it should be Tian Chan Ge if you want to follow the other things but change is just a weird name overall bc how it looks in english.
Thank you to you both! I'm gonna go ahead and adjust the names of my characters now. I'm grateful that you guys decided to help out :))