How to Choose your Chinese Name

For those getting in any sort of contact with China, or the Chinese language, choosing a Chinese name is like a rite of passage. It’s an important step in language study, business partnership or travel journey, an obvious movement towards the native speakers, who certainly feel more comfortable around foreigners who make this effort. Having a Chinese name makes you seem more approachable for the Chinese, because it not only breaks the barriers between different cultures but it also makes them remember your name faster. There are more ways in which someone can choose their new Chinese name, and we will tackle these in the following article, hoping to give you inspiration for your own selection.

Chinese Names

Before diving into our main task of finding your Chinese name, we should take a glance at how names in China generally look like. We should first note that the name structure used by Chinese-speaking regions is different from that of conventional Western full names. When trying to understand a Chinese name, one should start from the assumption that the family name comes first and is typically represented by only one character, while the given name is usually made out of two characters and stands after the surname. For example, one everyday name in Chinese is Zhou Dongyu (周冬雨) where Zhou is the family name, very common in Chinese, and Dongyu is a given name that can be literally translated to “winter rain”. You see, another characteristic aspect of names in Chinese is that, while surnames are relatively repetitive, given names can be chosen rather freely, according to the meaning behind certain characters.
When choosing a name for their children, Chinese parents pay attention to many aspects from the number of strokes that a name contains to the meaning of a certain character, because it is through the name that they can openly express their good wishes for the future of their newborn. Often, these names are taken from poems or received from a fortune teller and can confuse foreigners at first. At the beginning of your connection with Chinese culture, you might be amazed by how people can be called by names meaning fruits, animals or random objects, but it doesn’t take much time until one realizes that these all have far-reaching roots in their cultural heritage. Let’s take a few examples.

Female given names:

玉明 – (Yùmíng) – This name means “jade brightness” which refers to one of the most cherished symbols in Chinese culture which is a gemstone and is widely used signifying values such as kindness, wisdom and truth.

婵娟 – (Chánjuān) – With the meaning of “the moon”, this name concludes a whole set of beliefs tied to this symbol which has always meant unity, peace and prosperity for the Chinese.

丽梅 – (Lìméi) – This name can be translated to “beautiful plum blossom” and takes us to another emblem inexhaustibly used in Chinese art, that of the plum. The flowers of the plum are the first to blossom in the spring, while it’s still cold, and this is why they signify perseverance, courage and strength in Chinese culture.

Male given names:

石磊 – (Shílěi) – Boys usually receive names conveying power and courage, and what could transmit this message better than the name which translates to “stone rocks”? In Chinese culture, stones and rocks are considered concentrations of energy and life.
东阳 – (Dōngyáng) – This name, which means “eastern sun” contains one of the two main principles which are said to complete the world, probably known by everyone else in the world, yin & yang. 阳 is the positive, masculine principle in Chinese philosophy, as opposed to 阴 which is the negative, feminine energy.
奕辰 – (Yìchén) – This name can be translated to “grand sun, moon and the stars”, and carries obvious significance, including the most important celestial bodies for Chinese cultures in the second character.

Now that all this is clear, our only task as people not living in China is to choose a name that we like and that doesn’t make native speakers laugh when we introduce ourselves. For this, we can either transcribe our names into Chinese characters, making it obvious that we are foreigners, or try to go incognito with a meaningful and authentic Chinese. We will take a look at both methods.

Your own Name in Characters

Transcribing Western names into Chinese is the general way to go when someone wants a Chinese name that is similar to their official name in sound and when they want to achieve this quick and easy. Mandarin Chinese has characters exclusively used for transcribing foreign terms, including names, so it’s not very complicated to convert English names into characters as long as someone sticks to this list of possible components. You just have to break your name into its constituent sounds, replace these with similar-sounding Chinese characters and while doing so, keep in mind a few of their semantic aspects such as eventual negative connotations, trends and gender. Usually people do this process either to their family names, to keep names as short as possible, similar to Chinese names which typically have two to four characters, but in the case of celebrities, for example, both names are transcribed to avoid confusion. This might not sound too clear just yet, so we’ve enlisted the following names with explanations to illustrate these transcriptions.

Let’s look at the name Patricia, for example. One of its possible transcriptions into characters is 帕特里西娅 (Pà tè lǐ xī yà), which is the result of the conversion of its syllables into similar-sounding characters. Anyone hearing this name can know that this girl is not from China, so the meaning of each individual character becomes irrelevant. It’s the same with the name Jason that is usually transcribed as 杰森 (Jiésēn), adopting sounds in Chinese that are the closest to the original term. What usually happens during these transcriptions is that different vowel or consonant clusters (such as “tr” and “ia” in the case of Patricia) are transformed into two different syllables, because Chinese characters can only express one of them at a time. If someone is lucky enough, their name is like Jason, where vowels and consonants are placed harmoniously, so a person can just take this pre-established Chinese version of their name and only has to learn how to write two characters instead of five.

This can be done to any name of any language. Every transcription is only an approximate Chinese variant of a name, so the possibilities are close to endless given the number of characters in any dialect of Chinese. What the translators can manipulate is the approximate neutrality of the characters that they use for names in terms of gender or general meaning. Take, for example a name such as Ashley, which is considered neutral in English. In Chinese, it can have two different transcriptions with the same pronunciation (since many pronunciations in Chinese are connected to more characters) according to the gender of their user: 阿什利 (Āshílì) for men and 阿什莉 (Āshílì) for women. What’s different is the last character which in the case of the former name, means “strength” while in the case of the second name, conveys “beauty”. As you can see, there are characters usually used in male or female names, but if someone wants to make sure they don’t choose the wrong one, they can select one of the many neutral ones.
In terms of meaning, there are characters that are trendier or have nicer meanings than others, and these are more likely to be used for international names while transcribing them. Some of them are: 德 (dé), meaning “virtue”, 娜 (nà) meaning “graceful” and 强 (qiáng) meaning “strong”. Some people also advice foreigners to avoid characters that are considered cliché, such as 花 which means “flower”, and use others with the same pronunciation but more special instead, such as 画 which means “painting”.
Knowing all this, it should be accessible to choose a name in Chinese even if you don’t speak the language. If your name is very common, the answer is most probably already online for you to find. If you have a more special name, you can use the following table to create your own Chinese name:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transcription_into_Chinese_characters. Also, we have written another article focusing on the transcription of Chinese names, so maybe that can help you as well: Foreign Names in Chinese After successfully choosing the characters of your new name, you can consult with a native speaker to make sure that you haven’t made mistakes that will make others giggle. Another advice from us is, that in case you want to impress your friends with your cool new Chinese name, choose characters that are easy to remember so you can also write it down as a party trick.

Choosing According to Meaning

Maybe you were fascinated about Chinese names because of their meaning in the first place. If this is the case, you surely want to choose a name that is similar to authentic Chinese names, those described in the first part of the article, rather than transcribing your original name into Chinese characters. This way, you not only gain a deeper understanding of the language but can also express the core values that you believe in through something as simple as your name. Your Chinese friends will automatically know what type of person you are after you introduce yourself, because, as opposed to them, who have received their names at birth and might have kept it exactly the same since, you chose your name yourself, by a time that you already figured out your personality traits. So how should you start this exciting process?
The first and easiest step that doesn’t require much creativity is choosing one of the few commonly used surnames, if you want to create a full Chinese name, of course, instead of just a given name.

You can’t go wrong with a term from this list, since these few names in China make up about 40% of all surnames in use today:

Wang (王)
Li (李)
Zhang (张)
Liu (刘)
Chen (陈)
Yang (杨)
Huang (黄)
Zhao (赵)
Wu (吴)
Zhou (周)

If you don’t like the idea of being one of that 40%, you can choose a name from a piece of literature called Hundred Family Surnames or 百家姓 (Bǎi jiā xìng) which collects most of the Chinese family names. When you choose your Chinese family name, you can focus on how it sounds instead of stressing about its meaning, because you can express everything you want only through your given name.
If you selected the first character, you can start exploring the endless list of characters that can be used for a given name. Maybe you look into a few Chinese poems for inspiration, take ideas from names of historical figures, or select a symbol from traditional Chinese philosophy that you like. Either way, make your name unique and your own. Maybe the following names will get you going easier:

Given names for girls:

平安 (Píng’ān) – This name simply means “peace”. You can’t possibly stress with a name like this.

书兰 (Shūlán) – In this Chinese name, 书 means “book” and 兰 is “orchid”. A classy name for a chic bookworm, for sure. It’s also notable that the last character is part of Mulan’s name as well.

欣妍 (Xīnyán) – This name means “vitality” and “beauty”, certainly a good way of manifesting an optimistic worldview.

Given names for boys:

明杰 (Míngjié) – This name means “wise” and “distinguished” so anyone can bear it proudly.

永乐 (Yǒnglè) – The characters of this name point towards someone who is “always happy”, a great way to introduce yourself for sure.

博成 (Bóchéng) – Someone choosing this name can look forward to a bright future, since nobody can fail with a name that means “great success”, right?

We really hope that this guide was of some help in your choice of a new Chinese name, whatever the reasoning behind this pursuit of yours is. Of course, everyone has to do a bit of research on their own if they want to find the perfect name based either on its sound or meaning, but it’s a journey that can be really fun. If you succeeded, tell us your new name, we are really curious about it!