English Names vs. Chinese Names: Things You Didn't Know About Chinese Names 

"A lot of thought in your name." My chinese name literally means 'youngest sister' in Mandarin; pretty great thought process.

I know a girl whose name was Wai-Ting, and her English name was waiting

Hey! I just accidentally came across this video and u guys really did a good job. I really enjoyed it! Just one thing. Dan's Chinese name"大音（da yin), which comes from LaoZi's scripture"大音希聲", actually means "the real loud/beautify sound/music is actually no sound" or "great music has few voices". It reflects Chinese philosophy and aesthetic standard. It's really a good name!

My Chinese name means “cloud” (雲) and my family has a thing for giving us themed names so we match. It’s mainly natural things in the sky. For example, my cousins Chinese names are moon, snow, star, rainbow, etc.

Never tell your Chinese name to a non-Chinese speaker, or otherwise your name gonna be called in a really ridiculous way…

I am an ESL Instructor and I have had students, both Chinese and Korean, who have picked their own English name. Oh my goodness... the stories I have.

you forget about zibei (字辈) to show seniority in the family, like all siblings and cousins have the same zibei, and farther and his siblings and cousins have the same zibei

I'm married to a Chinese man and I have a 20 months old daughter. her English name is Sophia. her Chinese name means beautiful jade. her dad pick her nam.

both my first name Yat(溢) and my young brother's Tsun(溱) mean "flood" in chinese. they told me it is because on the night i were born, there was a serious flood in my home town. and when my bro was born, they simply didn't want to spend time on thinking of a name so they just pick a synonym of my name from a dictionary. naming children casually IS a problem. my last name is To(陶), so my full name sounds just like "to escape"(逃逸) in cantonese and kids were always making fun of my name. and somehow all my teachers, even my chinese teachers, can't pronounce my first name correctly until high school. btw, the first name of my parents mean "the origin of beauty"(錦源) and "to praise the germination"(詠萌). both of them have such a poetic name, and somehow they named us *FLOOD*. what a joke.

I was scrolling through RU-vid, and stumbled upon you guys. Watched one video and now I am HOOKED! Finally a channel about my culture and heritage, and a channel that I can genuinely relate to. I'm so glad I found you guys. SUBSCRIBED!

I'm Korean and my partner is Chinese. Our baby is due in two weeks and he went craaaaazy over picking a name! Since we live in Europe, we want her to have a Western first and an Asian middle name, so that she won't be picked on or so but still has a connection to her origins. Both names had to be acceptable im Chinese (like when you have a Western two syllabus first name that can be pronounced to mean something horrible in Chinese) and especially the Asian one, had to have a good meaning in Chinese AND Korean. Finally, her Chinese name is gonna be Jin-Yu (Gold and Perfection/Jade). (The Korean meaning is Precious and Perfection/Jade). We did however take the Jin character from my brother's Western name 'Kim', meaning Gold in Korean (although it is a last name and pronounced Goum when used in a first name) and go by the sound (keeping Jin-Yu im Korean rather than Goum-Yu) which does change the meaning slightly when switching languages.

To add to the point of Westerners having three names (at least in the U.S.). Your middle name is usually after a family member... but, in my opinion, I think it's just a way to let you know that you are in trouble. Because if your mother\father call you by your first and middle name, it strikes terror in the hearts of U.S. children.

My english name is Emily Taylor and my Chinese name is 泰美丽 which is supposed to sound like my english name but also sounds like 太美丽！

I go to a school with a lot of international students, and a lot of my friends are from China. They gave me the name 孙睿心 (Sun Ruixin) and told me that it means "wise heart". I was touched!

Vietnamese names are given according to their meaning too. My name means "shining pearl", my sister name mean "beautiful/pretty" (the words in her name are not used in daily conversation, only used in hystorical poem so it's really good to hear).

Another method that some Chinese people use. They would consult a monk, who will attempt to read the elements in their child, and their name will contain the element that they lack. So if you lacked wood, you're name would contain the character 木, or if you lacked fire, you could have the character 火 in your name. And by character, I don't mean that that's you name per say, it's more like a part of a word? So like 爆 has the 火 character. (Though I doubt people use 爆 as a name....)

I knew of a Chinese guy who gave himself the name "Stonchor" a combination of "Stone" and "Anchor" XD

My name is Mei-Hwa and is Mandarin for plum-blossom, and I totally understand the very long naming as well, because in the traditional Afrikaner culture the first son would get names from both of their grandfathers and the same goes for the daughters who gets their grandmothers' names. For example I have a friend who is Jacobus Albertus Johannes and then his younger brother is Jacobus Petrus and their sister, who is the eldest, is Anna Celia. Kinda makes this difficult when you call a name and like three people respond to it. My grandmother on my mother's side is Martha Johanna Susanna, but luckily I only have two names as does my brother who got his second name from our grandfather on my mother's side while I got my second name from my grandmother on my father's side. I found this video very interesting! :)

I never understood why some people name their kids after themselves.

If you are not Chinese and have a Chinese name, what is it?

Felicia comes from the Latin for happiness, so technically her parents still named her after the "yuè" meaning ;)

LOL at Dan's reaction when Mike Reveals his Little name to be "DONG DONG"

In southeast asia, we (chinese) have a way of giving names. For example, we have our surname, then each generation has a word that represents which generation you belong to. My name is 凯欣, and most of my perternal cousins have the word 凯 in their name (凯琪, 凯彦, 凯毅, 凯文). So we are known as the 凯字辈. And the same for my maternal cousins, 仁字辈 (仁杰, 仁龙, 仁兴, 仁祥, 仁恩). Does this applies to most chinese or just SEA?

My name is 冯文希。文，related to studying. 希, to have hope. My "小名" is in dialect. Ah Hei. It's Cantonese.

When I was living in China, I met a surprising amount of Chinese people named Apple. Also met a kid named Tiger. And... not sure if it was a joke or not, but my Chinese name is 黄美兰. Yellow, because of my blond hair. Beautiful, because I'm gorgeous of course. Orchid, because it's a tall skinny flower. The ladies who gave it to me all agreed it was a perfect description. I might as well keep it.

Thanks for the video guys and gals. It helps those of us who are genuinely interested in learning about other cultures. You make it fun and informative. Keep it up!

我的名字是黃祖業 My dad gave me my english name and my grandfather gave me my chinese name

My bf's name is Wilfred, and his Chinese name is Wifi 😂. Not spelled that way, but that's what it sound like. Wifi.

DONG DONG

I come from two blended cultures. My father's family were English and my mother's family were German / Dutch. My father's line has many many males all named the same and my father said it had to do with succession lines and also to do with inheriting the family signet ring which would have to be re-made if you as the eldest son had a different first name. In my mother's line both boys and girls are named after parents or grandparents but usually only for the first name. The second name was your unique name and your eke name (nickname) was a shortening of your first name. So for example my Aunt Beatrice is named after an ancestor named Beatrix. My brother is named for both his grandfathers. My one cousin is named after his father. In the German / Dutch culture it is considered to be giving honour to the ancestor to name your child after them.

My mother is from Singapore (Chinese-speaking) and I was made to believe that my name (Leanne spelled the English way) in the Chinese language (Lián, 莲) means lotus or the lotus flower... I may have been lied to!!

I'm half chinese and half dutch. I was born in the netherlands and still live here, so i have a dutch passport, which means my english/real name is Mika, and my chinese/fake name is 米加 (Mǐ jiā). Yep. It literally means 'rice plus', but i wanted it to sound like Mika...

You guys are great, I love watching you guys. You make things entertaining and at the same time, people who do list, it is easy for them to understand what you all are talking about. Awesome 👌

諸葛亮's last name is 諸葛, not just the single character 諸. That is why he is also called 諸葛孔明. And "小名" is certainly NOT an official part of the name. IMO, I believe it is really a just a tradition of having nicknames for young kids. I believe it was mainly started from ancient Chinese parents trying to confuse deity and avoid divine punishment targeted toward their young kids. That's why little kids were mostly nicknamed to be "Little pig, Little cow, etc".

Why are the girls embarrassed of their Chinese names? I don't understand, but I don't even have a Western nickname. I won't change who I am for someone else's convenience. Westerners learn how to pronounce my name after some time, you just have to give it some time and patience, and I don't care if anyone makes fun of me. I really don't understand why some Asians are so ashamed of their culture. No way will I ever pick a Western name.

My parents worked in Hong Kong and one of their friends chose "microchip" as their english name and i actually think that's really cool. My chinese name is "凯八" because of the way I sometimes write "kate" in english as "k8"!

I'm African (Congolese and Angolan) and usually in Congo you would include both parents surnames, forenames or middle names in their child's name- however, your surname will be in the middle e.g. Mia Liz Taylor will be Mia Taylor Liz. In Angola, its more like the rest of Europe, you take your fathers surname. So my name is Jessica N'dombe Sebastiao. My middle name is my grandmothers maiden name and my last name is my mothers surname (my grandfathers surname). However I was originally born Jessica Makambo N'dombe which is my fathers surname and my mother's middle name (my grandmothers maiden name). Suuuuper confusing!

if you know someone who gave themselves an interesting English name, let us know!

I'm Vietnamese (and yes, with the last name Nguyen...) I asked my mom the whole naming-after-parents thing and she said that you just don't do that, because when you yell/curse at your child then you're actually cursing at that relatives, too. Which is a no-go. It kinda makes sense, though when you think about it.

traditionally , most Chinese should have a 3-character name, the first one is the surname, the middle one is chosen in turn by family tradition(kind of a combination cycle of several characters ) , the last one is the given name. The middle name is for avoiding repeating( for families with the same surname, but living in different cities/provinces, the combination cycles are different ) my family combination is 觀 光 祖 德。。。mine is 祖 , but in recent decades, most mainland Chinese seemed abandoned this tradition, and chose a 2-character name or didn't follow the family rules.

My nieces and nephews 'little names' are Share Bear, Stevo, Stefi, and Junior Mint'. They are almost 30 years old and we still call them that.

I really enjoy your RU-vid channels. I find it interesting how difficult the culture are and yet similar they are. My husband and adopted our daughter from China when she was 9 months old. We have two boys of our own. Name have always been meaningful to me and we did put a lot of thought into her English name. here was my thought process. Shao Ming Tao. I know the Shao is from Hunan, Shaoyang this city in which she was found. I was told that Ming ment bright and Tao ment brave. we gave her these names; Cheyann (the girl name we had always wanted to use since our first child and there is no one in out family with that name.) yes, it is the same name as the American tribe, Cheyenne. We changed the spelling to look more like a girls name as well as, my middle name is Ann, so a little bit after me. Next we gave her Claral, in french means bright, luminat as well as honoring my deceased grandmother who's name was Clara. Third we kept Tao. The orphanage told us they called Tao Tao. I guess that would have been her 'little name'. Lastly is our surname Crowl, a German name that we gave no idea of its meaning. How did we do mixing the cultures and naming our daughter? while on the subject of adopting a Chinese baby. Do you have any videos on this subject? I'm interested in how accepted it is for Americans raising Asian children and how these children will be accepted as adults in Asian communities? Keep up the videos you hard work is appreciated!

In Taiwan, people often choose crazy names. Some I have seen are Phantom, DKNY, Batty, Puppy, Apple, Morningcard, Snoopy, u.Gar, and Kunt. There was one girl who used her Chinese name, but spelled it I-Yung Ho.

Dong dong sounds so adorable :D

In my country it is fairly common to give your child a 2nd and 3rd name and name those after their grandparents (depending on gender). In my case: 1st name *name my parents chose for me* 2nd name *my dad's dad's name* 3rd name *my mom's dad's name*

Haha. Love this. So nice to get an insight on another culture. Love Chinese history. Rich ancient civilisation.

what's your little name?

There is such a thing as naming your kids sequentially in Chinese. All the kids in the family would have the same middle character if they were the first child, a different character if they were the second child and so on. It's also super cool that there's often "sib sets" as in the names of the kids in the family are related somehow.

My race is Chinese and I have learnt mandarin for all my life, but I still don't know try meaning of my name ...crap

I am Chinese and i have a Chinese name it's : 江明洁 and it means clean, neat, sparkling river.

This was very informative, thanks!

my chinese name is 黎诗旋 which means "a poem of victory" and in first grade whenever our chinese teacher printed notes for us, she'd write my name as 黎诗璇 lol! that's bc chinese girls with the word 'xuan' in their names usually have 璇 instead of 旋, but my mother wanted my name to consist of the word "victory"... my teacher added a 王 to 旋 and tweaked the meaning of my name (even though it still sounds the same) so i became 黎诗璇 which means "a poem of jade"

Hi guys! I'm Greek and this stupid thing about taking your grandmother's or grandfather's name is soooo true! Here are some examples: in an island, Karpathos, there are old people that will give their whole fortune to the grandchild that carries their name. It doesn't sound bad right? bad news: their names are really weird like Engelbert or Humpty Dumpty! Second example: when I was about to be baptized and be given a name the families of my parents had a huge fight about whether I would be called Constance or Angel, the names of my grandmothers ( both names are veeeerrrryyyyy common and have terrible short versions that sound like you come from an uncivilized part of the world and cannot ever read or write). My mother got furious and told my father "that's never gonna happen! we have to give our child a beautiful name to carry with pride for the rest of her life!" My father agreed and insisted on calling me " Clematis " (in Greek it's Agrambeli) which sounds like an old smelly lady that has offered herself to God! In the end, the priest refused the name my mother suggested because "It;s ancient Greek and not Christian" and baptised me with the name Constance-Angel. The next day my mother went to court and changed my name to "Myrsini-Angel" . A few years later my little brothers took their granfathers' names by "force" and although their first names are ancient greek and beautiful, everyone calls them with their christian-granfathers' names! Poor brothers... specially my youngest brother... he's Nikos. we have 7 cousins with the same first and second name... sad...

This is great, thank you! I teach ESL to Chinese students and I really struggle with pronouncing their names. Luckily, some of them do choose English names. I haven't have a "Refrigerator," but I have had a "Chocolate" and a "Fairy!"

I would love to have a Chinese name!

My dog's name is 东东 dong dong.

I've just discovered this channel after all these years using it. you know what, I love this channel already!

If you know what your name means in your language you can use that to create a Chinese name

My name in japanese is Kenshin. In Chinese it's Qianxin.

There is a pretty good example of celebrities pick their Chinese names. And it is Rosamund Pike, she calls herself "裴淳华" which is very poetic.

I've been studying Chinese for 14 years and until now I don't know the meaning of my name 😂😂😂😂

Born with a chinese and english name 凯西张 Zhang Kai Xi It's a direct translation to Kathy Zhang (Kathy means pure) :3 Little name is Xia Xia ("she-she") (Xia in watermelon)

Loved all your names, the meanings behind them 😄

I had 朕(first person pronoun of emperor) in my old name and then fengshui said it's bad to carry such big name so my parent decided to change....=. =LoL My old given name was 佳朕, a good emperor...Then it was changed to 亮棋. Bright chess...ugh,,,doesn't sound or feel good at all

In Mexico we have two last names... so in english cultures the mother's last name disappears?

I teach English to Chinese students. Some of the names are so strange, like I once had a student named "hide on Bush paul" I was like whuuuut

Hmm, weird. I haven't heard that little name thing before. I'm more Thai than Chinese, and I have what I guess would be considered a Thai little name? Like all of my Thai relatives call me that, but it's not my name. I would consider it to be more of a nickname, but I think most kids have it.

My surname is lim and I have 2 character name but the middle character has already been chosen by my ancestor. 樹鴻猷明道，師先覺魯國。 禮啟宗殷家，仁傳嗣盛德。 駿業存子孫，永繼緒。 I am 5th generation. So my male child will have his middle character after 道which is 师

Good video. My name is Trung Kien Tran. My family is a refugee family from Vietnam but before the war my grandfathers were refugees from China to Vietnam. So we are Chinese people and we kept the traditions. My Chinese name being Chen, Jian-Zhong 陳 建 忠. I am about to adopt a son who will be African American but I am going to continue the traditions of my family and give him a Chinese name with the regular American name. The way we resolved this conflict is we looked into the original meanings of the names. We want to name him Caleb which is an old English/Gaelic name. But the meaning of the name is "Bold" or "Brave" and there's a good word that I like from Chinese which is equivalent: Yong 勇. The birth mother wants the middle name to be "Loyalty" which works fine. I don't like the thought that people will think I named him after me, because like you said, Chinese people would think I was "Full of myself". But that's the birth mother's wish so I will honor it. My father then told me about a family tradition of having the middle names follow a pattern. My middle name is Kien or Jian 建 and all my cousins of my "generation" from my father's side will carry the same middle name. He said that according to that tradition, the new child's middle name should be "Guo" 國. Putting all the pieces together my kid will have a lot of names Caleb Guo Trung Tran or Chen Guo Zhong Yong 陳 國 忠 勇.

I think this is the name my grandpa gave me 郭芳徽 (Quach Phuong Huy). It was very hard to get that name on a computer from google translate since i have a photo of it. And my little name, I think is 徽仔牛, apparently I was very naughty as a child and grandpa called me a Ox/Cow. Anyone here want to give a shot to what my name means? I know what my name sounds like in Cantonese but I have no idea what it means.

"Michael" does not mean "One who is like God". It is a question: "Who is like God?" Lucifer thought he was higher than God, but Archangel Michael has the humbler, more honest name.

维维安 that's my Chinese name. It means "Beautiful mountain" .. English name is Vivian ; - ;

我的中文名字是潘巧雯和我的小名是雯雯。 可是我的妹妹的中文名字是潘巧怡和她的小名是貓頭鷹因為她不喜歡睡覺。 AHHHH!!! That was my first time writing in Chinese in forever. Please don't make fun of me.

I'm not Chinese, I'm learning Mandarin though, so my teacher said I should choose a Chinese name. I'm studying abroad, so I though something to do with my hometown might be nice, and one of the options was Tāng Lìhuá, which he says means 汤 (The Ocean) and 丽华 (Sunniness and Brightness) which sounds a lot like my hometown... apparently Tāng also means soup though (ironically I'm having soup for dinner)

I recently stumbled upon your channel. I'm fascinated. I was raised mostly by my biological mother in Virginia who led me to believe that my father (who I only knew as a young child) was Thai. In recent years, I have learned that although my family lives in Thailand, they originally came from China! Thanks for dropping some Chinese knowledge!

Westerners get little names too.. but they're too embarrassing to share outside the family.

"Just call me Refrigerator."

What a fascinating episode! One of your best ever!

So a little name is essentially a family nickname for a child? P.S. love the videos!

in my family we have a family tree book where my name was decided like 1000years ago, at least the first of the 2 words. the scond word was decided by my father. and my future children will be named according to the family tree book as well i think. btw felicia looks like the asian version of jennifer lawrence xD

Teaching in China, I have met students with the most random English names. Box, yoyo (very common), hickey, a boy who's name was spelled "Allen" but insisted was pronounced "Ellen"... to name a few...

Giving a good Chinese name needs great knowledge! Name is just like a nexus connecting you and the the movement of the whole universe, it will deeply influence your fate. No joking here. Some fortune-teller with profound knowledge of Chinese names even could foresee your fate through your names!

Sounds a bit weird using 'east' and 'west' to talking about Chinese names and English names. And I think we traditionally don't name babies after someone because in Confucianism hierarchy in society and family had to be marked clearly with different signs. And name was one of them. Naming your child after someone is equalizing that person as your offspring who's below you, which used to be super offensive. Instead, the way of honoring some family member or important person in your life was to have that person naming your baby. It has little to do with the characters or the way our names are composed. But I guess few cares about it anymore.

My Mandarin instructor helped us pick our Chinese names, and we went only by them while in class. Mine is 杨绿溪, Yang Lu Xi, like green river/stream. I will never forget it.

Can you please block a certain commenter from posting on your videos, all their comments are racist and abusive. I'm sure most your viewers know whom I am talking about, but in case you rarely read the comments they are called xinyiquan666.

Wait, hang on guys...you don't have time to wait to name your baby in Western culture. Your baby is not allowed to leave the hospital without a birth certificate...which needs a name.

i love Dan's reaction...

Wondering, isn´t it a shame if you don´t speak Chinese if you were born in the US..? :(

Felicia's name is happiness? Guess what, Felicia comes from latin Felicitas, which means happiness :)

I was officially laughing my head off. Also, my little brother's name is Ben... 笨！！！！ :D

my chinese name is uvuvwevwevwe onyetenyevwe ugwemubwem ossas

In christian cultures we are told not to name someone after Jesus.

I (Paula) was named after my Grandfather and Uncle (both Paul), and I have three cousins with the same name (Paul). We consider it an honor to name our kids after loved relatives. Ethnically I am German/French from what used to be called Alsace-Lorraine in Europe.

I am Chinese, my parents named me by throwing pots and pans down the stairs and naming me after the sounds they made.

ben means stupid in chinese!?! huh

Felicias name is 100% correct :D She is always happy and elegant in all of her videos :)

Whats really amazing about Chinese names from what i've learned from my family is their complexity. For example a village carries one surname so everyone from that village have the same last name. Their "first name" is given by the parents, in poor villages many families are illiterate so they would actually find a word that they know how to write or is simple to remember and give it to their children. On the other hand the more complex the character or name it usually means that the family is wealthy and has a team of scholars and priests who advise the family on what name to give their children.

Yeah! I am Thai and of Chinese descent. My family name is pretty long and very difficult for foreigners to pronounce.

姜貞秀 (Jiang Zhenxiu) or in Korean pronunciation "Kang Jung-soo" where 貞秀 means "chasity and upright"

very educational and fun. I'm one of those Hispanics with two surnames. And because I became a Buddhist I was given a Chinese dharma name which is Ming Huey meaning Bright Wisdom. Keep up the good work.