Alexis In Chinese Letters

Alexis In Chinese Letters – Do these names sound familiar to you? It is one of the most common English names in Mandarin Chinese. If you visit or live in China, one of the biggest questions you cannot avoid from Chinese people is “what is your name?”. So you will definitely want to know how to pronounce your name in Chinese.

If you don’t know, all foreign names can be easily translated into Chinese, one way or another. Of course, you can close your name in English. The problem is, people in China – except for young people in big cities like Shanghai or Beijing – generally don’t speak English. If you answer with “Patrick”, or “Charlotte”, it is possible that they will not know, remember, or pronounce your name. That’s why it’s important to learn how to pronounce your name in Chinese.

Alexis In Chinese Letters

We will talk about the most common names in the world – both their Chinese versions and the common variants, teaching you to write your name in Chinese characters, and to pronounce it in standard Mandarin. In addition, we will look at the rationale for Chinese translations of foreign names and show you how to translate your name from English or your native language. And at the end of the post, we’ll help you learn a few words to use when introducing yourself to your Chinese-speaking friends.

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It’s a very quick and easy word to add to your basic Chinese vocabulary! If you break the word down into characters, 名 (míng) stands for “given name”, and 字 (zì) means “honorary name”, which is a name given to a person upon reaching adulthood in Chinese culture.

Actually, 名字 (míngzi) just means a given name, but informally, you can use 名字 (míngzi) to refer to your full name (family name + given name).

The difference between these two words is that 姓名 (xìngmíng), made up of the letters 姓 (xìng) – “family name” and 名 (míng) – “given name”, is the official word for the full name, so it is used in formal situations such as written documents. Meanwhile, 名字 (míngzi) is often used in conversation, or when saying phrases like “my name”, which in Chinese translates to 我名字 (wǒ de míngzi).

The Chinese language does not have an alphabet, instead, the writing system is made up of thousands of different characters. So in Chinese, all foreign names – whether from English, Greek, or Russian – need to be written in characters, which are actually words, rather than letters.

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With few exceptions, most foreign names are translated, more precisely, translated into Chinese by combining Chinese characters that sound similar to the syllables or phonemes of the name. original. For example, Jason becomes 杰森 (Jié sēn), two Chinese characters that sound like Jason in English.

For some Western names, translating is easy because all you have to do is break your name down into its parts and figure out how to pronounce it in Chinese. and you got it.

As you can see, although these names may look completely unrecognizable when written in Chinese characters, their Pinyin (Romanization of Chinese characters) versions look exactly the same as the original, except for the punctuation. a sound.

Because Chinese characters can only represent syllables as concrete blocks of sound but not as a fluid combination of characters, many western names, when translated into Chinese, do not sound like the original.

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Since each Chinese character is one syllable, you need a different character to represent different parts of a vowel group that would be pronounced together as one sound in English (eg “tr “, “ia”).

So, in the examples above, while “Bradley” is two syllables in English, it becomes a four character/syllable name when translated into Chinese. And “Patricia”, a three syllable English name is now five syllables in Chinese.

In addition, Mandarin Chinese has very few syllables compared to English (there are about 400 syllables in Chinese compared to over 10,000 in English), so often, noun sounds the alien is not there at all. in Chinese. In that case, you just have to produce the closest equivalent you can!

Although these Chinese versions don’t sound like the original names, it’s the best you can do!

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Important note: often, Chinese translations are a very poor approximation of the sound of foreign names.

Chinese translations of foreign names do not have to conform to English pronunciation. Many names are translated into Chinese using the sounds of their first word.

For example, John is pronounced 约线 (Yuē hàn) in Chinese, which is not the same as “John” in English. This is because the name “John” itself is derived from the Hebrew name “Yohanan”. So the Chinese translation of John is based on the Hebrew pronunciation of the name rather than the English – hence the name translated as 约线 (Yuē hàn).

Similarly, “Joseph” is translated as 约瑟夫 (Yuē sè fū) in Chinese. It follows the pronunciation of its original Hebrew name “Yosef” as opposed to the English name “Joseph”.

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For example, the famous Japanese artist Yoko Ono is 小野洋子 in Chinese, which is the same as her name written in Japanese Kanji. Since the characters are read differently in Japanese and Chinese, 小野洋子 is called “Ono Yōko” in the original Japanese but (Xiǎoyě Yángzǐ) in Chinese.

The same goes for Korean names and Vietnamese names – since both countries used to use a writing system based on Chinese characters, you don’t need to translate the names into Chinese with idioms like you would I can do with western names.

Writing foreign names in Chinese characters has a long history and practical reasons. But do Chinese names really mean anything?

However, most of the time the way to translate foreign names into Chinese is phonetic only. Although the Chinese characters that make up names have their own meanings,  the combination of characters in a translated name doesn’t mean anything – it’s just a series of sounds.

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For example, Christopher is written as 图像多夫 (Kè lǐ sī duō fū) in Chinese. If you take the characters literally, “克-里-斯-多-夫” means “gram-inside-thus-many-man” or “conquer-mile-this-more-husband” (Chinese can have many different meanings). But just by looking at it, Chinese people will immediately know that it is a foreign name and discard any meanings these characters originally had. It is obviously just a phonetic representation of “Ch-ri-s-to-pher”.

That said, since there are many characters to choose from when writing a foreign name, a translator can change the text to add additional meanings to the name.

Just as Chinese parents like to choose names with good meanings for their babies, characters with negative meanings will be avoided in favor of “good” characters with positive or at least neutral meanings. side for translation. It’s great when the translation of the name sounds like words and phrases.

For example, the letter 德 (dé), which means “virtue”, is often used to translate the word “d” in English names such as Dwight – 德怀特 (Dé huái tè) and Gerald – 杰拉德 (Jié lā dé ).

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Similarly, the sounds “t” and “Ge” are represented by 特 (tè) – “exceptional” and 杰 (Jié) – “unique”, respectively, in the above names – the other two characters with good intentions.

Additionally, some characters are considered masculine or feminine. For boys, this means characters that show strength or toughness are often used when translating their names into Chinese, and for girls, characters that have suggestions of beauty or elegance.

For example, the female name Hannah is 汉娜 (Hàn nà) in Chinese, and the character 娜 (nà) means “gracious”, while the male name Johnny is 强尼 (Qiáng ní) in Chinese, and 强 (qiáng) and mean. “strength”.

For the same reason, a different category may be chosen for writing a single word or phoneme in foreign names to clearly indicate masculinity or femininity.

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For Johnny – 强尼 (Qiáng ní), the neutral letter 尼 (ní) is used to write the word “ny” in the name, while for Jenny – 珍妮 (Zhēn nī), 妮 (nī) – the feminine letter is used . instead of writing the same “ny” sound, which means that the bearer of the name is a woman (extremely 女 to the left of 妮 symbolizes a woman).

To illustrate this point, take a look at how the gender-neutral name “Ashley” is rendered in different Chinese translations based on gender.

The sound “ley” in the male “Ashley” is translated as 利 (lì), a neutral character meaning “good”, while in the female version it is translated as “莉”, a well-known character used in Chinese girls’ names meaning “Jasmine”.

You may have noticed that Mandarin Chinese has a lot of similar characters (with the same words but different meanings, like English “deer” and “dear”) because of its vocabulary. weak. So it’s easy to use different types of characters to write some foreign names. In other words, a foreigner can have many names in Chinese.

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For example, Chris can be written as 克里丝 as well as 围口 – both are pronounced (Kè lǐ sī).

And the number of possible translations can be greatly increased when the name does not exactly correspond to any Chinese sound, and several characters with similar sounds can be considered.

For example, Rachel can be 蕾切尔 (Lěi qiè ěr), 瑞吉儿 (Ruì jí ér) and 瑞秋 (Ruì qiū) at the same time since no particular combination of characters makes sense. of English “Rachel.”.

It is interesting that famous western people with similar names are often given different names translated into Chinese on purpose as a way to help Chinese people distinguish one person from another.

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Take the example of Trump, the name of the First President of the United States Donald Trump is translated as тромеп (Tè