The importance of names to Chinese What does your name mean to you?! It is needless to say we all care about our names. It is the same to Chinese people. As you can learn from the old saying ‘Don’t worry about being born with the wrong destiny, but being given the wrong name’. This emphasizes the belief in China that your name will determine your fortune.
Most Chinese learners must have got a Chinese name from their teachers at the first few classes. In China, children are named with qualities their parents hope they will possess to give them a good life in the future. Zodiac predictions is an important thing for consideration when giving names.It can help parents to pick a suitable name as you want to ensure there is a balance in your child’s life. Chinese names are typically in 2 or 3 characters. The first one is the family name. The later one or two are given name. Girls names will most likely also have phonetic female parts in their character, like my name 安娜 Anna, notice how both the characters have ‘女’ (nv3) meaning female. Whereas men have names that have ties to strong objects or masculine traits like ‘杰’ (Jie2) meaning heroic.
For a westerner, it might be hard at the start to hear a difference between male and female given names. As you learn more Chinese, you will notice that women’s names emphasize female characteristics like ‘美’ (Mei3, ) ‘beautiful’ or are tied to objects that are seen as feminine ‘莲花’ (lian2 hua1) ‘Lotus flower’.