Know anything about Chinese names?
I'm creating a Deadlands character who is a guy whose family was associated with a Taoist temple in Guangzhou (Canton), who came to America during the Second Opium War. This has provided me with endless interesting things to research, some of which have already paid off: for instance, our lab is getting a guy from Fujian province whose accent is apparently so bad it's nearly incomprehensible. I was able to flaunt some knowledge I'd picked up about how the hilly geography and multiple waves of immigration into Fujian made it a province where the saying is "Go five miles, a new culture; go ten miles, a new language". I don't know if that's part of the issue of the coming postdoc, but it will be interesting to perhaps learn...
Anyway. I'd like to come up with a harmonious Chinese name, and I'm curious if anyone has appropriate knowledge. For a family name, I'm thinking Yan, since it's one of the few that seems neither cliche (like Chang or Wong) nor liable to run into idiot cowboy punsters (like Chou or Wong). Does Yan fit for a Cantonese guy? (In searching, I find that "Guangzhou is the mandarin pronounciation for kwongchow." Huh! I hadn't thought that they wouldn't use the local pronunciation.)
Personal name is harder. My understanding is that the aesthetic in China is to come up with a name that means something good, and which is unlike everyone else's name. In English, I'm figuring on calling him China Jack. But that could easily be something someone stuck on him because they couldn't pronounce his Chinese name... Or perhaps it was something vaguely like his Chinese name. I like the sounds ng, j-, and ts-, in general... Jixu? There is at least one Chinese guy with that name, but I can't find what it means. Is the "xu" the same xu as in Lin Zexu, the opium-destroying badass bureaucrat who I figure Jack's family idolized? Ah Lung is cliche, but I still like it, but I hear both that it means "big dragon" and that the Ah is something added to names to make diminutives. Is "ah" = "big" a nickname thing like "Big Tony"?
Originally posted on Dreamwidth, http://zdashamber.dreamwidth.org/121565.html
Anyway. I'd like to come up with a harmonious Chinese name, and I'm curious if anyone has appropriate knowledge. For a family name, I'm thinking Yan, since it's one of the few that seems neither cliche (like Chang or Wong) nor liable to run into idiot cowboy punsters (like Chou or Wong). Does Yan fit for a Cantonese guy? (In searching, I find that "Guangzhou is the mandarin pronounciation for kwongchow." Huh! I hadn't thought that they wouldn't use the local pronunciation.)
Personal name is harder. My understanding is that the aesthetic in China is to come up with a name that means something good, and which is unlike everyone else's name. In English, I'm figuring on calling him China Jack. But that could easily be something someone stuck on him because they couldn't pronounce his Chinese name... Or perhaps it was something vaguely like his Chinese name. I like the sounds ng, j-, and ts-, in general... Jixu? There is at least one Chinese guy with that name, but I can't find what it means. Is the "xu" the same xu as in Lin Zexu, the opium-destroying badass bureaucrat who I figure Jack's family idolized? Ah Lung is cliche, but I still like it, but I hear both that it means "big dragon" and that the Ah is something added to names to make diminutives. Is "ah" = "big" a nickname thing like "Big Tony"?
Originally posted on Dreamwidth, http://zdashamber.dreamwidth.org/121565.html