Need your suggestion about English name

Has anyone else noticed that names of the characters in movies are names that are popular now but weren't popular when the character would have been born?

Oh Jesus . . . next thing ya know, DD is gonna want cowboys to only be able to fire a six-shooter six times before they hafta reload . . .

I do wish that names that can't be read phonetically would get printed with pronunciation guides. This is not limited to Chinese names; I would have completely muffed Blagojevich's name.

Everyone knows that six shooters could only be fired five times.

You know, formerly names in Chinese were rendered in the Wade-Giles system, which, although not perfect, at least had the virtue of using a system of pronunciation recognizable to most speaker so European languages. The current pronunciation system in use, Pinyin, was created by a committee in the PRC in the 1950s. I leave it to judge for yourself the value of Pinyin, keeping in mind that a camel is a horse designed by a committee.

Japanese names are just as easy as pie--they are phonetically spelled from an English speaker's point of view. Commodore Perry forced the Meiji Japanese to open their ports to foreign shipping in 1853, and in a fit of pique, they went to the English for their expertise in joining the modern world--they still drive on the left, silly buggers. They "romanized" their language based on English as they learned it from the English.

So, the great Japanese dynast from the late 16th and early 17th century, Tokugawa Ieyasu has his named pronounced just exactly as an English speaker would say it, looking at those words: "Toe-koo-gah-wah Ee-ay-yah-soo." Maybe that's why i prefer Japanese history to Chinese history--i find it easier to read.

Interesting, thanks.

I knew some Chinese and Japanese immigrants in the US who used to do that. Some did it because they thought it was fun, or liked Westernization, but most did it just because they were sick of repeating their foreign names to Americans.

For example, one Japanese girl I knew, who is actually an a2k member as well, is named Mutsumi, but at Starbucks she started going by "Mika" just because they always did a double take. It isn't a particularly hard name to pronounce, to me at least, but the Starbucks folk found it a lot easier.

Shengyi in Chinese it refers to "determination to win", and "Changqing" "longevity like a green pine tree ".

I hope that you suggest some E names according to the meaning I have pointed out as above.

What I am worrying is that the collocation of the first name and famility name is not perfect. Like:

What word (first name) to make a good collocation with Tony? And what word with Lynn?

"Determination to Win"="Victor"

"Longevity like a green pine tree", stretching a bit, "Forrest", like "Forrest Gump" the movie or Forrest Sawyer the newsman. Granted, it's not a really common name and the spelling is a bit different.

This is probably even more of a stretch, but it does tie together a couple things: "Longevity like a green pine tree"= "Sequoia" which are the Coast Redwoods of California, among the world's oldest living trees, several thousand years old, and also the name of a Cherokee Indian, who invented a complete syllabary for writing Cherokee, and turned his entire tribe literate in about ten years, a remarkable achievement. It's an actual name, an American one, tho not one used much in English names.

Well, do you think both Victor Tony and Forrest Lynn are good names with proper collocation?

And, I simply don't like Forrest Gump very much. He's somehow an idiot. Money is not anything, after all.

The Lovely Bride was born in Hong Kong (New Territories) and came to the
US at the age of ten. She and her brothers and sisters all had both Chinese
and English names. Her mother picked two of the girls' names from
members of the British royal family and one from the heroine of a popular
movie. The boys' names were picked just on what sounded good at the time.

In the US, she used her English name at school and in any context where
non-Chinese were present. As she grew older, she preferred the use of her
Chinese name. That is the name I use for her.

Our three children each have first names of Celtic origin and Chinese
middle names (picked from suggestions by my father-in-law).

I'd go with Chinese last (family names) and English first names, if you're going to do it--people are pretty much used to that format. Victor Teng, Forrest Lin (or Lynn, either one, we'd just pronounce them the same anyway.

Forrest Gump was pretty slow, true. It's possible that that the movie would be on people's minds with that name, it was a very popular movie. I'm not sure what people might read into it--would they think of Forrest Sawyer rather than Gump? But it is kind of a nice name.