Chinese Names
Chinese culture
differs from Western culture in a number of ways. Personal names,
for instance, in China are based on different conventions as
compared to the personal names kept in Western countries. The major
point to be noted is that Chinese names are always written or used
with the Family name prior to the first name of an individual. For
example, Brian Fernandez to be interpreted as a Chinese name would
be Fernandez Brian. Another popular instance can be of the
basketball player, Yao Ming, who is addressed as Mr. Yao in
Chinese dialect.
Sometimes, if a
Chinese has to move to some other country for personal or business
person, he or she may adopt a Westernised name by converting the
existing Chinese dialect to the Western dialect. For example, in the
above case, Yao Ming can be reversed to Ming Yao. Many a times, some
Chinese people living in Hong Kong and Singapore take a combined
name of Western first name, surname and Chinese first name (John Yao
Ming), or in a reversal order of Western first name, Chinese first
name and surname (John Ming Yao).
Traditional Chinese
names had always followed a certain suit of using generation names
as part of a two-character given name. This often created confusion
while referring to someone by the first part of their given name
only as it would be their generation name itself. This actually
keeps occurring in Western societies, where the first part of the
given name is often mistaken as the first name unless the given name
is hyphenated. This convention is not in much use today except in
Taiwan, Hong Kong and Malaysia; in Mainland China, given names
usually have only one character. People belonging to the rural areas
mostly have rural names given to them by their illiterate parents.
Many East Asian
countries also follow the same pattern as of Chinese names, with
more than 700 different Chinese family names used in these countries
today. A majority of Chinese family names have only one character,
while a few with two characters. Today, married Chinese women keep
their maiden names as their family names instead of adopting their
husband names in the Peoples Republic of China (PRC). However,
children generally adopt their fathers family names only. Earlier,
marrying someone with the same family name was prohibited or
considered offensive regardless of the relationship between the
parties concerned, but this does not exist anymore.
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