Chinese Language Stack Exchange
Chinese Language Stack Exchange

Questions tagged [names]

Questions related to Chinese names.

Names are usually a kind of proper noun, i.e. terms that refer to and designate a single entity.

This tag may encompass:

  • person's names (anthroponyms), including given names and surnames
  • place names (toponyms)
  • names of institutions (companies, schools, etc.)
  • commercial names of products
  • anything else that can have a uniquely identifiable name

An easy, but not exhaustive, rule of thumb to know whether a noun is proper or not is whether it could be capitalized in alphabetical languages.

For place names, you should prefer the tag.

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Placeholder name for a Chinese person targeting foreign audience, ie. John Doe equivalent

Suppose I want to make up a story featuring an unimportant Chinese character. How do I give the name, so it sound like Chinese, but do not carry too much particular meaning? That said, the Chinese character is neither the protagonist nor the…
把友情留在无盐
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What traditions do people follow when naming a second child in Chinese?

What traditions do Chinese people follow when selecting names for consecutive (2nd, 3rd etc.) children？ In the case of my own children the second child was given the same middle character as my oldest son so they are both called 赵"something"恩. My…
going
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Why would 人 be used for names?

I've seen 人 used as a character in multiple names. 李劼人 is an example of a fairly well known person with the character 人 in his name. It seems slightly jarring that 人 - person would be a feature of a name, I'm guessing there is more to it - but I've…
Mou某
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How should this painting's title, signature and yin (chop) be correctly translated?

This is the title, signature and chop from a painted silk screen. I think the upper characters translate as hǎi táng huā [Chinese flowering crab-apple (Malus spectabilis)]. I think the lower characters are the name of a type of bird. Can you please…
Stephen Becker
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How does the Chinese translation of an English name get established?

This isn't a question on how to choose a Chinese name equivalent, but how the one that most media and people use, gets used. For example, if some unknown person out there who never had a Chinese name, say Rufus Gainey (some random name), solves the…
Steve
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Is the female name 桂英 outdated? Why?

I suggested naming a Chinese baby girl 桂英 after her grandmother but my suggestion was rejected as the name was considered outdated. I know there is a legendary heroine named 穆桂英 and the name 桂英 is commmonly used by many Chinese ladies. The name…
Zuriel
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Help me choose a Chinese name from a list of ideas

My English name does not transliterate well to Mandarin, so I'm choosing a Chinese name. I want it to evoke wisdom, inner strength, peace, beautiful and serene elements of nature, and poetry. I'm new to Chinese. I'm positive my clumsy attempts at a…
M. Bal
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How to determine if a personal name is feminine or masculine?

Sometimes when working with Chinese names it is not evidently clear whether the person in question is male or female. Besides using pure, fallible, intuition - what other methods are there to tell if a name is feminine or a masculine?
Mou某
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Chinese given names with 3 or more characters?

Most Chinese given names are 1 or 2 characters long. Were there any proper, Han Chinese given names of 3 or more characters, that weren't transliterations or pseudonyms? Surnames are different; while most are only one character, there are quite a…
congusbongus
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Is there significance on whether having a 3 character name versus a 2 character name in mainland China?

I only have experience with mainland Chinese families having 3 character names, however, my family only has 2 characters in our names. I saw a similar question acknowledging the difference between Hong Kong (3 characters) and mainland China (2…
T L
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Is it correct to call the UK 英国？

As we all know, the UK means the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, in which there is not a word or a syllable that sounds like 英, but why is the name of this country in Chinese is 英国? Some may attribute this to the fact that…
NanningYouth
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In the film 流浪地球, why is a character nicknamed '户口'?

The most common translation of '户口' seems to be 'household registration system'. The other meanings do not fit either: https://www.mdbg.net/chinese/dictionary?page=worddict&wdrst=0&wdqb=%E6%88%B7%E5%8F%A3 What is it a reference to?
Burrough Clarke
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Help choosing a Chinese name among a few shortlisted ones

(I'm not actually certain my request fits here, as I'm looking for specific advice rather than answers to an abstract question. I'm sorry if it doesn't.) I'm going to study in China for two years. In the next weeks, I'll have to fill out the…
narnarnarnar
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Must Japanese people's name be mapped to equivalent Chinese characters?

According to this question titled "How do we choose the correct characters for a westerner name?", the accepted answer says the following: It's your name and you can arbitrarily pick characters to be your name. Other answers also say that they can…
Blaszard
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Why do Chinese writers have three different names?

I've been reading about Chinese writers and apparently they have too many names! For example, in the article of Wikipedia about 黃遠庸 (Huang Yuanyong) there's first this name as the title of the article. Then appear the pen name 黃遠生, and after that it…
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