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[Opinions] Re: Chinese Names
in reply to a message by Felie
Hello! I grew up in Taiwan and my first language was Mandarin, so I believe that I have something to contribute. That being said, I moved to the States when I was nine, so my Chinese isn't as great as it should be. Still, though, I thought I should respond. My Chinese given name is actually only one character long. It's 元 (Yuán) which literally means money. You might have heard it used to refer to Chinese or Taiwanese currency. I wish I could give you some more names, but I feel like it wouldn't be right to just tell the internet all my friends' names. If you want to name a character who's a child, you could just add Xiao to the front of the name. It means little, and it sounds cute no matter what it's attached to. But it's probably not a good idea to name your kid Xiao something, 'cause they'll probably be ridiculed by any Chinese speakers they meet. So yeah, do what you want with that. Now, that being said, I'm kind of against the idea of westerners using Chinese names in general. My rule is "if you can't pronounce it, don't use it" and most foreigners can't pronounce Chinese names right. I mean, I'm not blaming you guys, Mandarin and Cantonese and the other dialects are pretty hard to learn if your native language is English, but if you really can't say it right, then don't use the effing name! Plus, if you don't know the language too well, the name could end up sounding ridiculous to someone who actually speaks the language. I saw a thread a few weeks back that mentioned the name "Xiao Xue", and I can tell you, if an adult told me that their name was that, I would be trying really hard not to laugh. It doesn't mean anything inappropriate, but it just sounds like a nickname for a five year old, not an actual name. It works the other way around, too. My mom taught English at a university in Taiwan, and some of her students picked some really ridiculous English names, like Milk and Apple. Wouldn't you be laughing too if you met someone named Milk? Anyway, I'm not saying that you should just throw away the idea of using Chinese names, I'm just saying that it would probably be smart to actually understand the language first. Just my opinion, of course, I can't tell you what to do. So yeah, that's all I have to say. Feel free to argue with me, I'm pretty bored and I'm sure an argument would be interesting.
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