What are the Chinese characters to this female Cantonese name?

[Sgt_Strider]

In English it's spelled as Chun yan. Anyone know what the characters are to this female name?

[leeyah]

Female name 春燕 is quite common in China

[Lu]

But 燕 doesn't read yan in Cantonese, or does it?

OP, any chance you can ask the person with this name how it is written? That's usually the most reliable method to find the answer to questions like this.

[HashiriKata]

But 燕 doesn't read yan in Cantonese, or does it?

The name may be Cantonese but "Chun yan" may be the Mandarin version of it. So, 春燕 is not completely unimaginable.

[skylee]

In Cantonese (HK), "Chun" can be 俊, 春, 秦, 循, 進, 雋, 臻 etc

In Cantonese (HK), “Yan” can be 欣, 恩, 茵, 甄, 因, 殷, 仁, 胤 etc.

俊欣, 俊恩, 俊茵 can be a girl's name. Personally I know a guy whose name is 俊仁.

PS - if the girl is below 30 and from HK it is a bit unlikely that her name would be 春燕。

Edited October 12, 2008 at 01:55 PM by skylee

[leeyah]

if the girl is below 30 and from HK it is a bit unlikely that her name would be 春燕

Even if she lives in Hong Kong she may still not be Cantonese, what with so many mainlanders crossing over in the past ten years and even earlier

Also, lots of "Xianggang" college kids learning Putonghua in Guangzhou lately

In Cantonese (HK), "Chun" can be ..., 春, ....etc

Anyway 春 would actually be ceon1 (Jyutpin) or cheun1 (Yale) in Cantonese and not chun (pinyin), right？And 燕 would be jyin - same, same but different

The name may be Cantonese but "Chun yan" may be the Mandarin version of it. So, 春燕 is not completely unimaginable

Besides, a Cantonese friend of mine never spells her name in Cantonese, but in Putonghua,...

Edited October 12, 2008 at 08:30 PM by leeyah

[skylee]

Even if she lives in Hong Kong she may still not be Cantonese, what with so many mainlanders crossing over in the past ten years and even earlier

The title of this thread has specified that the name is a "Cantonese name".

Romanisation of Chinese names in HK follows its own system, which is neither hanyu pinyin, nor Jyutping, nor Yale.

While 春燕 is a possible option, my personal view (as a HKer) is that it is a very old fashioned name which is why I think it is unlikely. If I were a parent I would not name my daughter 春燕. This is all I am saying.

[trien27]

All of what everybody said might be partly true for the name Chun Yan, but there's one thing that most people didn't notice about Chinese names, is how it's "misspelled or mispronounced" when "translated" into a non-Chinese language or a dialect different from the original. Chun Yan might be a misspelling of "Chung" or "Yang". If she's an old lady, she might or might not be able to write her own name or might have said it in a "xiang yin" or

"乡音", meaning a regional accent out of the place where she's from. Also, there's a probability that people who helped translated the documents might have heard it wrong, and therefore it came out wrong, etc...

[yuensin]

It is difficult to give a chinese character for your Chun Yun because so many characters sound the same in chinese. To give the correct translation will have to look through the whole story book, article or what ever you have got it from.