What is in a Chinese name?
Ching Chong, Wang Jun Ta, Chen Jia - youâve probably heard similar two-to-three syllabled Chinese names transliterated into English. Even as a Chinese speaker, I used to think these names sounded ugly. Meaningless. Unharmonious.
The thing is, I have a name like this too - Wang Yi Jing. My parents gave it to me when I was born but I eagerly set it aside to become a newly immigrated, America-approved âAriel.â It was only when I traveled across China and introduced myself with my Chinese name and started conversations with others about their names did I realize the beautiful culture behind these two-to-three syllable identities.
Unlike many Western names, there arenât standardized names - no Andrew or Christine equivalents formally exist in the Chinese language (however, you can argue that there are commonly used names). As such, Chinese culture is also absent of Name Day holidays that celebrate standardized names prevalent in European and Latin American cultures.
So if there arenât official Chinese names to choose from a book, how do they come to be? Historically speaking, in the Song Dynasty there was a list called Hundred Families Surnames (çžĺŽśĺ§) that have since developed into around 800 official Chinese family names. While the first letter of the Chinese name is limited to these characters and must be passed down by fatherâs side of the family, the latter part of the name is open to an infinite amount of choices and combinations.
Before I explain the possibilities, one has to understand the mechanics of the tiniest component of the Chinese language: a Chinese character. Unlike Arabic and French, Chinese is not phonetic. You also donât need lots of characters to create a word. One character can be a word symbolic for a place, a thing, an action, a disposition. With one character you can express âbuildingâ (ć¨) just as well as you can express âdreamâ (夢).
Through one or two more characters(s) added onto the family name, the parents instill their hopes and dreams onto the newly named.
Longevity. Beauty. Elegance.
Or perhaps the namers want to give what they never had to the receiver of the name.
The possibilities are infinite. For example, my paternal cousinâs name is made up of the words âBookâ (ć¸) and âPeaceâ (ĺšł) because his father wanted my cousin to succeed in his scholarly endeavors.
I was acquainted with a man whose name is âRoad Strengthâ because his mother gave birth to him upon a road.
I met a girl atop Mount Huangshan when she explained, over the sound of scattered thunder storms, that her name is âSun Cloudâ (ćĽé˛) and that she happens to be a student of Thunder Studies at Nanjing University.
The third character in my Chinese American friendâs name represents the place she was born, âCaliforniaâ (ĺ ).
I met a gentleman in Dali smoking around a bonfire who introduced himself to me as, what I thought was, âMountain Roadâ (幹衯). In Chinese its pronounced shan lu, and I being the romantic, I imagined his namer to be a dreamer, that perhaps she sees the difficulties in conquering a mountain but also the rewards â like good health and aerial scenery â it can reap. But nope. He laughed and reiterated that he actually said san lu meaning âThree Roadâ (ä¸čˇŻ) and he actually named himself because likes the melodious rhythm of the simple words.
The combination of words can also make up new meanings, for example, in the film âUp in the Wind,â the heroine has the words âSkyâ and âHappyâ in her name. The combination of these two characters set her up for mockery because âSkyâ can also mean âDailyâ when prefixed; her name thus is interpreted as âHappy Everydayâ (夊ç˝) when the characterâs disposition is nothing of the sort.
So what do the three seemingly random sounds that my parents gave me mean? What is Wang Yi Jing? My family name is Wang, it means âVast,â and its tradition to use it. But for the open-to-creativity component, my parents chose âYiâ (ĺŽ) because they wanted me to be âFittingâ and suitable for any given circumstance. As for the last character of my name, after voyaging between Shanghai and Kunming, I learned that my Jing is an uncommonly used character, and because of that I must always describe how it is written. I would tell my new friends that it sounds like another Jing which means âSceneryâ (ćŻ) but when written, it has an upright âHeartâ to the left of it (ćŹ). My Jing means to be âAwake,â such as in life and in consciousness because much like Oscar Wildeâs famous verse, my parents wanted me to realize that âto live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist. That is all.â
If you had the choice, what would your Chinese name be? Would it be more of a transliteration or would you try and reflect your own values and interests? I met a woman whom identifies with the male gender. To align with her chosen gender, she renamed herself Xiao Song or âLittle Pineâ because she not only think its masculine, but because she is fascinated by pine trees and squirrels.
In Chinese identity, literarily, you can be anyone you want to be.
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