A Chinese name

[Guest Harry_Mudd]

Gudday

I'm after a Chinese name for mate of mine.

They call me Yue(-) Han() for Jon of course, and He(/) de(-) for Herd. (and Hey, Its only taken 3 years but I can actually write it in hanzi now!)

Anyway his name is: Eric Craney.

So far I have been given : Ai Ruai() Ke() for Eric and Ke(-) Ruai() Ni(-) for Craney.

looks too long to me.

Any suggestions?

[bathrobe]

Get him a real Chinese name, not a transliteration of the English name.

Try this site:

http://www.mandarintools.com/

and check out their Chinese Namer.

[smithsgj]

I like the tone mark idea though the brackets make it a bit cumbersome I suppose. Without brackets 3rd tone would look like just another letter so 旅 would be like lvv.

Name, I have no idea except I think you mean rui not ruai; and most foreigners seem to go for a 3-char job based perhaps on their name or just the surname even. I'm sure someone will suggest one!

[confucius]

Ke Lei/ Ni/

(Gram Thunder Nun)

That would be the official Mandarin transliteration of his surname. He doesn't need his first name added.

Who gave you "ruai" ? That's not even pinyin. Looks stupid to me.

[ananda]

How about 柯<ke1>(Craney)埃<ai1>里<li3>(Eric)，since Eric is quite similar as ©raney，and 柯 is a chinese surname, I think it's quite a good

name. 8-))

[Guest Harry_Mudd]

It looks stupid to me too, Confucius. The Ruai was given to me by the manager of one of my local restaurants. Her English is reasonable, apart from the fact that she doesn't recognise capital letters. (and argues with you about it ;-) )

Her Englsih is like my Chinese. She knows a large number of words but can't string them together in a sentence.

As Ned Kelly said....

[hparade]

yes, i like the tone marks and they have a set of rules on how to put them on which letter, i don't know why using numbers is popular and standard now, it doesn't even look like a script! maybe due to computer, yes i don't know how to type tone marks~~

[Lu Yi Si]

A real Chinese name? It annoys me, all this name business. Why do people feel the need to become 'beautiful rain' or whatever. I believe the same in reverse too. You can use a transliteration, many people feel this is the best way including me. Obviously the trick is to shorten the name to be between 2 to and 4 characters, otherwise it's impractical and unworkable. I would use An 安 instead of Ai from Eric. Therefore having a 3 character Chinese name with a family name. So 3 characters fits into all the paperwork and let the Chinese know that he is a foreigner as well when they read his name. My name in English is Lewis, but in Chinese the standard transliteration is 路易斯 change the Lu to a family name 陆, it's done.

Also I think that Chinese do not need English names. Name shortening can help this if a Chinese girl is called say, Fang Meng Qi. Then she should tell westerners to call her Qi Qi for example, shortening the name and making it memorable for most westerners. It also sounds much nicer than Tracey or Lucy and is much more appropriate, especially in a western environment. Why not celebrate your ethnic background? Chinese men can do the same using A then the family name eg A'Wang. Chinese already do this themselves, but need to introduce themselves to English speakers in this way, instead of using a complete name which will probably be forgotten. If Japanese don't need English names why do Chinese people?