Quick thoughts on character names
disclaimer: i'm not attacking anyone and this is my PERSONAL opinion on how people are writing chinese character names in ENGLISH fic. pls don't come at me without recognising this. this is not a serious post, this is just me expressing my thoughts as someone who lives in a community that speaks chinese and english and commonly uses both languages in the same sentence. feel free to ignore this if my naming preferences offend you.
anywAys i was reading a bunch of fanfic for revenged love and i'd just like to point out the whole name thing:
the characters' names go like this:
- wu (last name) suo wei (first name)
- chi cheng (first + last) ~> edit: because it's already two syllables, he would always be referred to as "chi cheng" even if it's his full name
- guo (last name) cheng yu (first name)
- jiang (last name) xiao shuai (first name)
from personal experience, in english we'd usually call people with chinese names by their first name only, and full name for emphasis/much like when you're in trouble. also we'd usually call people by two syllable names, i cannot explain why. but it's also why chi cheng will always be chi cheng and not just cheng.
moving on,, e.g for nicknames it can be like:
- "xiao (small)" or "da (big)" wei (last syllable of first name)
- cheng (last syllable of first name) "ge" (older brother, much like "hyung"/"phi")
- shuai (last syllable of first name) "ah" (just. a sound. i cannot explain why. it just is)
- "ah" shuai also works
- there are many others, like "shīfù" or "lǎoshī" both mean "teacher", could be used as a sort of seniority/formality. and many many more nickname types.
also pls note that this is different from when speaking/writing in chinese, bc in chinese you'd usually use a mix of full name/first name/kinda depends on what you want to do lmao. i've read a lot of chinese fic where people use full names in the fic while referring to characters, but use first names when speaking to one another.
technically speaking i've also seen posts/heard from friends that wu suo wei's name should be "wu suo wei" because it's a phrase in chinese (meaning "(it) doesn't matter"). however to me it's a lot like calling natasha romanov by her full name every time i read a fic. it's like:
natasha romanov says, "this sucks."
bucky barnes takes natasha romanov's hand in his.
"yeah, it does."
also, referring to characters as "wu" and "guo" is just referring to them by their last name. in a lot of east asian culture, the last names usually come before the first names (wu suo wei, guo cheng yu, blablabla). so when used in fic it's like addressing them as "barnes" and "romanov" respectively.
while this is not wrong, it just sounds a bit strange... maybe just to me LOL.
all this to say - it's really up to you to call your characters whatever, but if you'd like to use their first names, then this would be how you'd write them.
tldr: chinese and english fic read different and i personally think it sounds better to refer to chinese characters by their first name when writing fic in english.
source: my brain
