Cantonese name Chi Sing

[HSC]

Does anyone here go by the name of, or know someone who goes by the name of "Chi Sing" [Chee Sing]?

How would this name, which is pronounced this way in Cantonese, be written down in Chinese characters?

I understand that one such rendition is 志誠.

Are there any others?

Thanks.

[skylee]

It could be any combination of characters of these two pronunciations -

Chee - http://www.arts.cuhk.edu.hk/Lexis/lexi-can/pho-rel.php?s1=z&s2=i

Sing - http://www.arts.cuhk.edu.hk/Lexis/lexi-can/pho-rel.php?s1=s&s2=ing

Like 自成 as in 李自成.

[Quest]

skylee, the audios sound really weird, and bad quality too. the Z sound isn't very clear, it sounds like Theeeee.

[skylee]

Not my fault.

[HSC]

But not all combinations will produce common names, or names that sound right. I've been googling, and have come up with 志成 and 志誠 so far.

The reason I ask this is because this is the Chinese name my grandfather (from Guangzhou) gave me, but he never wrote it down. He is no longer alive, so I can't ask him

I don't think 自成 is common as a Cantonese name, is it?

[skylee]

Of all those characters these are commonly used in man's names -

Chee - 子 梓 志 智 自 治

Sing - 星 勝 升 昇 成 城 乘 盛 承 誠 丞 盛

[geraldc]

Check with any cousins, as if one of the characters is a generational name, they'll have the same character in their name.

[confucius]

"Chee Sing" ? Sounds crazy to me. "Chee Sing" is one of the most common phrases used in Hong Kong, usually preceded by the notorious "Nay yommo GAO chou waaaaah"

[HSC]

Sorry, you'll have to explain more. I don't know Cantonese.

[confucius]

"chee sing" means "crazy" as in "You're crazy!" I don't know much Cantonese either but if you spend 3 days in Hong Kong or watch any Hong Kong comedy film then you'll hear this word quite often.

The Chinese characters for your name are actually quite honorable, but the pronunciation strikes me as being funny.

[skylee]

"Chee sin !!" (黐線) means "crazy" as in "You're crazy!". Literally it means the lines in one's brain (imagine a machine) are stuck together, so the brain cannot function well, thus crazy.

黐 -> http://humanum.arts.cuhk.edu.hk/Lexis/lexi-can/search.php?q=%F8u#

It is not "chee sing". 黐's pronunication is actually different from the "Chee" mentioned in OP's post. (But since Cantonese romanisation is not standardised ...) And 線 is definitely not "sing".

[fenlan]

黐线 chīxiàn literally seems to mean "sticky thread or sticky line"

[HSC]

Phew! I'm glad my name doesn't mean crazy.

Ok, so is 黐線 (commonly) used in Mandarin as well or is it a Cantonese term?

[Quest]

Well yea like skylee said, Chee is both "c" and "z" (stupid romanization), so 志成 and 黐线 are very different. "Dzee Sing" vs "Tsee Seen", and it's Yomo gaoco a? not waaaaaaa

[atitarev]

My 2 cents:

Here's the Yale romanization of the words discussed (h just shows low tones, it's not pronounced). In my opinion, it's better to use some standard when talking about pronunciation. Yale is very common but there's also 粵拼 (yuhtping) transliterated as jyutping in jyutping (no pun intended).

.

志成 jisihng 黐线 chisin

[skylee]

A standard is something that is accepted by most people, or enforced by the authority. As far as I know, 粵拼 is not.

[atitarev]

Agree with that, Skylee. However, 粵拼 is promoted by Hong Kong goverenment (or was) and some online dictionaries and phonetic input software are based on it. Anyway, my point is it's better to use some reference, rather than trying to render the pronunciation in another language with what it seems correct.

E.g, Mandarin/Cantonese consonants pairs b/p d/t are different from English. So 台北 is Taibei in HanyuPinyin but Taipei in Taiwan pinyin. It's a well-known city, so there's no confusion but if it's a small place or person's name it causes confusion.

With Cantonese names sometimes it's hard to map English transliteration to the actual Cantonese pronunciation (let alone to Chinese character). So, "Chi" - is it really Cantonese "chi" or "ji"? To an English person they sound almost the same if pronounced by a Cantonese speaker.