Dear Red, I'm writing an Untamed story, and I want to use diminutive forms of two character's names. I understand that I could use 'A-' but that would lead to the character being known as A-Yuan, and there's already a lovely A-Yuan and I don't really want to reuse the name. Could I, in this instance, use the first half of the name instead, or is that breaking all the rules? Thank you for all your talents.
Hello there! To form a diminutive name, the “A-” prefix is applied either directly to the given name for single-character name or to the last character of a two-character given name, you don’t really see it combined with the first character of a two-character name. However, you can use the “Xiao-” prefix (小, literally “little”) to coin Xiao-Yuan or the -Er suffix to make Yuan-Er (儿, literally “child”). Just as an aside, the latter has a more northern feel while the others are more southern customs but these are not hard-and-fast rules. The other possibility is to use a duplicative name by repeating the second character: Yuanyuan ^^