Pro-Tip: On Creating Chinese Names
As a Chinese myself, I always dislike it when I come across a Asian/Chinese character with a strange name cobbled together using three Mandarin syllables, making absolutely no sense. Even worse happens when people make up Chinese sounding names, or mix up Korean, Japanese, and Chinese names and just slap them on any Asian-looking FC.
Therefore, here are some tips on how to create a believable Chinese name:
A Chinese name consist of the surname and the given name. The surname goes before the given name, opposite of American English names. That will be eg. Lim Shi An. Lim is the surname, Shi An is his given name. The surname is usually one character, but it can be two in certain circumstances. The given name is usually 1-2 characters depending on your character’s hometown. For places like Singapore, we generally have two characters for our given name. For China, it can vary.
Not any Chinese character can be a surname. Just go here and here to pick your surnames. If you are unsure of whether your character’s surname is a real one or not, you can do two things: a) consult with me (I’m always available) or any other Chinese blogger, or b) just use a confirmed surname from the lists above.
And vise versa, not every Chinese surname can also be used for a given name. Naming your child Lim is strange, but Li (which is the pinyin for Lim, can be the pinyin for other different characters which can be used as a name). Chua/Cai isn’t a good given name too, but Chen is. If you want, here is a list of common characters in given names and their meanings.
Please, for the love of all things, do not create a Chinese character out of nowhere. I just finished reading a novel with the name Jo Li and I had to check with my Chinese translator: Jo is NOT a Chinese character in any form.
If all else fails, you can always put an English name in front of a Chinese surname, like Ashley Tan, or Jeremy Lin. Loads of Chinese probably would consider getting an English name for convenience; it’s popular in my country where English is our first language. However, if your character came from a little village in a province in China, then most probably they would not have an English name.
Lastly, it’s probably better to use a name which you are very sure it’s not completely gibberish, then make up a name that sounds cool in English but makes every Chinese wince.
Once again, I am always available to help with your Chinese names.
Here are a good number of Chinese names under the cut (one of them is mine, but I won’t tell you which):
baratheonpilled
theartofmadeline
ellievsbear
turnnoffyourmind
kaledo-art
janainaart
snowghoul
