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This is actually a common problem in newspapers and television in Singapore, where the original report may have been filed by a reporter who did not or cannot use Chinese. In these cases, the author simply chooses phonetically matching characters to fill in the name of the person, then add (音) or (译音) to indicate that the name shown is only a phonetic ...

It's your name and you can arbitrarily pick characters to be your name. We chinese generally selects characeters with positive meanings (of course, I think characters with negative meanings would not be the choice for most people) and avoid possible bad meanings from the words with the same or similar pronunciaton with the name. For example, it's common to ...

You're right, most foreign words are transliterated differently in Mandarin and in Cantonese. Sometimes there are even different standards in different Mandarin speaking regions. It's an interesting idea to use characters that have similar pronunciations in both dialects to unify the transliteration but it's not what has already happened. A few examples of ...

To elaborate on Kabie's comments: In general, the answer is that you never know for sure what is the right translation without further information but only a Pinyin of the name. However, the clue for guessing the right family names comes from experience in real life for native speakers. E.g. Li is highly probably to be 李, Wang for 王, Zhang for 张, Liu for ...

Usually people ask. Like people asking if a person's name is spelled a certain way, most Chinese people ask if it is a certain character. E.g., Your surname is 'Li'? Is that 'Li/李' as in plum (李子) or 'Li/理' as in reason (理由) ? There are commonly used names, but it's usually better to ask if you don't know. For exercises, the picking the actual character is ...

In a previous post "How do we choose the correct characters for a westerner name?", I listed some characters that I think are popular in names nowadays. Remember, characters don't express the gender, so there are only some "rough clues" to guess the gender of the person. One example would be “芳”, which means "fragrance,good smell".It's very common to be ...

In my experience, it mostly depends on two things: What's the meaning of the characters? Flowers, plants, beautiful things in general are used for women's name. If the radical of one of the characters is 女, that will give you another clue. While characters with a meaning related to strength and power (and possibly wealth) are usually for men. How does the ...

if he is older than you are, then 柯兄 (柯老兄) if he is younger, then 老弟 (柯老弟) if he is of the same age, and his first name consists 2 chinese characters, then first name if he is of the same age, and his first name consists 1 chinese character, then full name (calling someone by their full name is not rude if they are the same age or younger in China) EDIT: ...

When I first saw it, I thought it meant fist fist. By the way, I think the same word appearing twice in name usually is only appropriate in girls' names; it makes the name cute. If you are a guy, you probably don't want that. But there is a 成语（4 word idiom with well known meanings) that says 拳拳之心 (heart of 拳拳) which is an adjective that means forever ...

I just made my personal name up and chose a Chinese family name (天) that was a syllable contained in my last name (Sebastian). My "made up" personal name (云龙) is a modified version of the name of a famous monk (虚云) I didn't want to copy his name directly out of respect. I figured that seeing as so many Chinese people come here (Australia) and select a ...

• I have been studying Chinese for about three years total and I still find it difficult to remember Chinese people's names. There isn't a short cut to learning how to pronounce Chinese names; you need to learn pinyin, the Chinese phonetic system. Fortunately, it is not completely divorced from English phonetics, but there are enough differences that make ...

Tones Unless the name has a really old and/or well-known phonetic translation, a "safe" rule seems to be to pick characters pronounced in the 1st tone. This is particularly true for names that are either long, uncommon, or otherwise tongue-twisting (as far as Chinese speakers are concerned anyway). Male vs Female Certain characters convey masculinity ...

You can choose your chinese name by its original meaning or just by how it sounds. I know people named Alessandro and he picks 三多 as his chinese name, which come from a famous chinese TV series 《士兵突击》. 三多 sounds like a part of Alessandro and regular chinese given name is only one or two characters. Picking name by meaning like 胜利 to victory isn't bad idea. ...

You clarified your question in a comment that your starting point is the Pinyin. I'm not sure why this would ever be a starting point in real life for a Chinese name, but the analogous situation in spoken Chinese is quite common. There is no general solution, of course, since syllables as pronounced do not map to unique characters. So if you don't know ...

It could be a good name only if you are not going to use it for any professional occasions. It sounds like a nickname for little kids, and you could totally keep it just for fun. But it should not be your Chinese name if your goal is to use it for job interviews or any business opportunities. You will need a better name than that.

How can I learn how to pronounce names of Chinese students? Short of learning Chinese? Avery suggested learning how to read pinyin. However, this ignores the problem that there are sounds in Chinese that do not exist in English. For instance, following some consonants, pinyin "u" is pronounced like the German "ü". Pinyin "sh" and "x" are both pronounced ...

This is an interesting topics. I will throw in my 2 cents too :D Company Names Many big companies hire PR/Advertising firm to conduct research to create localized name or brand name. Though many times they will end up with phonetic translation, some will get nice semi-phonetic, some of them get lucky with phonetic and poetic. Famous Semi-Phonetic ...

Other answers would like you to learn tones: If you don't plan to learn Chinese, this is a lost fight. I would ask the students to pronounce their name even before you prononce it, and write down phonetically what I heard beside their written name, in any way that make sense to you. You could even add information about the student (tall guy), or get a ...

The real age doesn't really matters for being 老sth. we usually call some of our peers 老* especially when one is considered having a mature personality. If you are introducing your friend who's much younger than you, you can say 这是小*.. If your friend is a big guy around some age, you can say 这是大柯. 大* is popular in the north, in my hometown no one use this ...

The other posters have already answered the meat of the question: in most cases, there isn't a way to tell except by asking. As GTK mentions, one way of solving this ambiguity is to reference another use for the character. Another common strategy that hasn't been mentioned yet, though, is to describe the character by radical. (This is true not only of ...