Rant: Don't Butcher Chinese Names Please
yaoyueyi At these times, I'm glad my mother put me through at least a bit of chinese when I was younger....
lol, huzi. Who did that?
Panqiuyan My mom named me xu jiayun... jiayun as in added luck, more luck, that sh*t. What does xu mean?
NihilisticBeauty isn't xu your last name??
yaoyueyi Hi, can you help me with my character's name? I'm born Chinese, first language is Chinese, but my language skills are just plain terrible. I don't have much confidence in naming.
The MCs:
Yuan Ji
湲/園
(Hope)冀
Yang YueChen
(To raise/hoist/flutter) 揚
(Music/cheerful and Earth/Dust) 樂塵
Other names:
Zhi He 紙鶴
Yao Feng
Gui Zheng 鬼整
And if you could, please translate this:
Paper Crane Fleeting Amidst The Storm.
Many thanks!
yaoyueyi Last names have meanings too.
xu as in
徐
NihilisticBeauty well, I don't study last names so I don't know their meanings. I generally know more over first names. all I know about that xu is that it's one of the most common last names, so yep.
Ahhhhh. Thank you for writing this! Have you seen The Other Side of A Cultivation Novel? The main character’s name is Shu QAI. And he gets called Qai.... that’s not even a word/character. I left a rant about it on chapter 3 it’s the most upvoted lol.
RoachTheRoach do they mean cai? does that make his name... vegetable?? :0
- Edited
This Tiny Fish brings a question to you, Revered Gramps:
Have you any better names than Xiao Lang (Little Wolf) to recommend?
Specifically, for a female child whose's a glutton.
This Tiny Fish is filled with gratitude (-ω-)ゝ
DaddyFishGotBigPp do you want a nickname or an actual name
Umm can I ask too? what about this? 古龙神君
It's for my male character in my historical fantasy novel. oh, so I can use this! Thanks!
yaoyueyi This is where I’ve got these names from:
https://thoughtcatalog.com/jeremy-london/2018/03/285-chinese-girls-names-and-what-they-mean/
yaoyueyi
It's for the actual name of an character, but it would be better if it could ressemble a nickname;
Xiao Lang.
Was this fishy explanation enough?
This is my apology in advance.
My novel has more characters with names that I just think of. I have never taken name meanings into consideration but, am sorry because right now I can't change my plot.
am sorry for using letters to create my own names that sound like Chinese but not.
Forgive me this once. mostly Chinese who use this site.
DaddyFishGotBigPp uhh give me a while, I'll eventually think of one... eventually. but in chinese, typically nicknames don't have to be similar to names if they're things like animals.
yaoyueyi Ayy! This Fish will thank you in advance! ( •̀ᄇ• ́)ﻭ✧
So, I tend to disagree here, while logically what the original poster said makes sense, my own naming conventions have actually been rather successful in the few I looked up after the fact. One turned out to be a rather prominent name in Chinese culture: Yu Chang completely by chance as I knew nothing about the Yu Chang blade before naming him. The other is a minor doctor character whose name translated White Snow (honestly very fitting for a doctor since doctors tend to wear white) but it was also random chance.
I know the exception doesn't make the rule, but so far my names have been the exception.
GabrielKross honestly tho when you say white snow or baixue, you're making me think of 白雪公主 (baixue princess) and that's actually snow white the fairytale princess. oh well tho, if that's what you like and are going for. it's not the worst I've ever seen.
however, I did check out your novel to see exactly what you were talking about, so just a helpful tip: why would you include the accents on only bai xue's name? either do it for yu chang + all the other characters too or remove those accents. they're useless for non-chinese speaking people.
as for your other character names, they don't sound very good either. ang li sounds like dirty pear (肮梨) (I would highly suggest using 'an li' instead or go for 'li ang' which makes sense because then it makes their last name li and doesn't give the same connotation), ma xiong sounds like horse bear (马熊) or horse brother (马兄)... this one is much worse than ang li actually
so, "I tend to disagree here". don't think that your "naming conventions" are exactly the most successful. they haven't "been the exception". yu chang is the only decent one imo so good job for that?
Can you check on these names too? ฅ'ω'ฅ
Xia Meiren
Lu Yifeng
Lu Xian Yu
Ji Ruo
Zi Lin
Mo Jing
Bai Xui Ying
Dong Hua
Gu Mai Ya
Li Bingbing
Zhao Long Ji
Zhang Wei
Su Lei
Xia Jiamu
Xia Sinian
Jing Yue