Making Anglos choose a Chinese name like Chinese people (and south Koreans and maybe others) have to choose an English name is a 10/10 bit. Love it.
this post was submitted on 30 Apr 2025
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chapotraphouse
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I'm not even anglo T_T
Ok, just a generic Euro? Asian? South or North American? African? Oceanian?
Indian
chinese names are kinda cool, they actually have a meaning
Afaik all names have meanings, the current language is just hundreds of years or miles divorced from the origin of the name for many. My full name translates as (He Who Guards) (The Village By The Moor) (Herald of Destruction), but it's across 3 languages that haven't been spoken in around a 1000 years.
ROC is salty about simplified Chinese and tries to do some eugenics shit with their language. I saw a video of a two women band on The Voice Taiwan, one of them sang pop and the other growled (as in metal), and she got disqualified for "disrespecting the Chinese language" or something. For growling. In real China she would probably be a national star by now lol.
Her bandmate was allowed to continue without her btw.
I was gonna say, would you (op/sodium_nitride) romanize the "Chou" instead of "Zhou" because you're going to Taiwan?
^ assuming you're adopting 周 (I mean other zhou surnames like 舟， 州 are less common but would still be romanized to chou in taiwan)
relatively inconsequential but worth a couple seconds of thought also regarding adopting surname
I know some chinese people find it a bit weird when non-chinese people use a (normal/standard) chinese surname when picking out a chinese name (no problem with getting a chinese name itself), idk maybe check in with your organizers first?
I mean if you wanna still run with it go for it, it's just that last names especially chinese ones are often tied to ancestral roots and often (but not always) is kind of a tell for what region your folks come from (related: mapping chinese surnames and earlier waves of diaspora with plethora of romanizations of their surnames penned by western immigration officers).
Oh, and also, most people don't factor in the surname when explaining what the name means. 明 by itself means bright, shining, illuminated, smart, depending on context.
Ah, thank you for the info. I choose a common surname specifically because I thought that would make it stand out less, but I suppose this concern is valid.
I can't really reach out to the organisers about this. I have to submit my details through intermediaries who are taking care of the whole process.
You're probably fine to use it, especially if you feel it's similar to your og surname (evoking its pronunciation/first syllable, or its meaning). It's just a consideration that might come up, definitely would feel weirder if you were a white westerner haha. Historically non-han peoples sinicizing took particular Chinese last names, for example, among Hui ethnic people who practice Islam, some common last names are 胡 hu/hussein 马 ma/mohammed 穆 mu/also mohammed
I had no idea this was even a thing. I thought "Zhou" was already romanised. If the Taiwanese want me to make it "Chou", I could do that certainly.
Just didn't know if you were giving them the hanzi or romanized :P
Yeah Taiwan doesn't use pinyin all that much afaik, but for names I think they always use a system similar to (if not just is) wade-giles for romanization
(For example 蔡英文(hanzi) Tsai Ing-Wen (taiwan romanization) Cai Yingwen (pinyin);; 马英九 (hanzi) Ma Ying-jeou (tw) Ma Yingjiu (pinyin))
Zhou Enlai is waiting for you, smiling at you to take his name
Fuwei （复卫）