Chinese Name

[Torco]

Name yourself something like "The East is Red" (东方红, Dōngfāng Hóng) and confound everyone.

Yes. Dongfang. Do this.

Too late, I call dibs
With a small variation, my Chinese name shall henceforth be

Dōngfāng Cào

*should I ever need one

[Nannalu]

2) You're annoying.

lol fuck off. you don't even know me.

[treskro]

Name yourself something like "The East is Red" (东方红, Dōngfāng Hóng) and confound everyone.

Yes. Dongfang. Do this.

Too late, I call dibs
With a small variation, my Chinese name shall henceforth be
Dōngfāng Cào
*should I ever need one

東方肏?

[Nannalu]

Oooh, I want a Chinese name now!

Nán Làng
南浪

[Skomakar'n]

You should call yourself Shao Lin (sorry; I don't know the tones or the hanzì).

I know that's Cantonese, they're singing in, but the pinyin seems to be Mandarin, since neither shao lin nor hao matches up with the pronunciation...



Or try to find out what words they're using for 'Iron Head' or 'Mighty Steel Leg' and pronounce the characters the Mandarin way!

[treskro]

少林 shàolín Shaolin


I don't know Cantonese, so this is just guessing based on Mandarin cognates:
鉄頭哥 tiětóugē Iron Head brother
not sure about steel leg, but the first word sounds like 金 gam so maybe
金鋼腿 jīngāngtuǐ Golden Steel Leg

Keep in mind that it's kind of a joke song, so they may be intentionally pronouncing words incorrectly.

[Ser]

I don't know Cantonese, so this is just guessing based on Mandarin cognates:
鉄頭哥 tiětóugē Iron Head brother
not sure about steel leg, but the first word sounds like 金 gam so maybe
金鋼腿 jīngāngtuǐ Golden Steel Leg

That's right, they're saying 鉄頭哥 tittàuhgō and 金鋼腿 gāmgongtéui. I wish I knew what the pun is though...

[Torco]

Name yourself something like "The East is Red" (东方红, Dōngfāng Hóng) and confound everyone.

Yes. Dongfang. Do this.

Too late, I call dibs
With a small variation, my Chinese name shall henceforth be
Dōngfāng Cào
*should I ever need one

東方肏?

*nods*

[Bob Johnson]

東方肏?

*nods*

草泥馬

[Anonimulo]

2) You're annoying.

lol fuck off. you don't even know me.

Ask your grandmother.

I drink_
You drink_
He/she/it drinks
We drink_
You drink_
They drink_

From my last two topics. I know you enough.


Anyway! You guys seem to be forgetting that the surname comes first and is one character. So, it would be Hong Dongfang (or maybe Dong Fanghong). :p But, yeah, I guess my best bet would be to ask a Chinese person. Too bad I'm not, like, close with any. :/ But in the meantime, does anyone know where I can find the sound changes from Old Chinese to Mandarin?

[Skomakar'n]

Ask your grandmother.

This was a joke related to the podcast, though. I thought it was pretty funny. I don't think he meant any harm with it. About the verb inflections, I simply interpreted it as a misunderstanding from his side, not understanding what you were asking for.

[Echobeats]

And I saw their American names were Selina and Mavis. How the hell did they choose them?

They just choose a name they like, often with the aid of a naming dictionary. This is why you get so many odd-sounding names: in English there are a few ordinary names which millions of people have, and lots of unusual names which very few people have. Unusual names are therefore hugely overrepresented in naming dictionaries. So if you pick one at random you will probably end up with something bizarre.

I just translated/transliterated my name for fun. (Timothy which is my first name, is too long for my liking, so I went with my middle name)

I am also a Tim, and a Chinese person once transl(iter)ated my name as 天 tiān "sky, heaven". It's probably the closest sounding word and is pretty cool meaning-wise.

[Torco]

東方肏?

*nods*

草泥馬

mud horse?

[treskro]

草泥馬

mud horse?

Homophones of those three characters

[Rui]

草泥馬

mud horse?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grass_mud_horse

[Torco]

xD most excellent

[Shm Jay]

How about 贾君鹏, since it actually seems to be a name, too?

[Anonimulo]

OK, so. As far as my last name goes. Shkreli. Simplified to /skrej/ for the sake of Chinese. Now, I'm reading about Old Chinese to Middle Chinese. The /s/ is considered the pre-intial and just drops, doing nothing? The r is eventually lost too, it seems. I read it retroflexes coronal consonants, but would it do nothing to the /k/? So, I'd be left with /kej/ with Tone 1? From there I don't know, and I'm not sure if I'm on the right track.

(I realize something like this is over the top and unnecessary, but. Indulge me? >.>)

[linguoboy]

It's been a while since I tangled with this and I have access neither to Pulleyblank's or Baxter's reconstructions at the moment. But here's what I think you get:

*skrel > *skrej
*skrej > *kɛj [phonetically something like *kəɨj according to Pulleyblank]
*kɛj > *kiɛ
*kiɛ > [tɕiɛ] (PY jie)

As for tone, I think it would be first tone (i.e. [55]), but I'm not sure about the effect of the final. (The preinitial probably drops without leaving any trace.) As it so happens, there is an existing Chinese surname pronounced jiē, namely 揭 "raise; announce;uncover". It's a rare one, however (although not a rare character).

FWIW, I "translated" my surname. The first part is an element meaning "bridge", so I use 橋 Qiáo, which is rare enough to provoke comment, but not so rare that people refuse to accept it.

[Anonimulo]

Wow, linguoboy, that was awesome and simple! Thanks! If you could confirm it, it'd be great.

OK, so. Surname down! Awesome. Jiē is a great start, and I'll just use the transliteration for "Mike" for now: Jiē Màikè. Too bad the S and the R drop without a trace. :/

Also, out of curiosity, what's your last name? If you feel comfortable enough to say it. I kinda wish I had one of those "meaning" last names like Smith or something, then I'd just find the closest meaning Chinese surname to a smith or something. (Also, what does FWIW mean? >.>)

[Rui]

Out of curiosity, how rare is it (i.e. any famous people with the name, or do you know anyone with the name?), and where did it come from? As far as I can tell, it doesn't show up in the Baijiaxing (not that the Baijiaxing is the be all and end all of Chinese surnames...), which must mean that it developed into a surname after it was written, or that it was maybe the surname of some foreigners that didn't have a presence in China until after it was written or something? Or else it's just so rare that the writers of the Baijiaxing didn't feel it necessary to mention (in which case, might it not have died out by now, over 1000 years later?)

I also wish I had a "meaning" surname, or if it is, one that I actually understood (if it does mean anything, it would be in Tagalog, which I'm not familiar enough with to be able to research its history...). Therefore, I just use a phonetic equivalent, 安 an1 (which DOES appear in the Baijiaxing ) in my Chinese name.

And FWIW means "for what it's worth"

[linguoboy]

Also, out of curiosity, what's your last name?

It's two syllables. The first half means "bridge" and the second is a common surname element meaning "enclosure" or "courtyard" and by extension "farmstead". I translated it with 莊, which properly means "villa" and shows up in the names of many farms and hamlets in North China. So 橋莊 is what I use for my Japanese surname.

Out of curiosity, how rare is it (i.e. any famous people with the name, or do you know anyone with the name?), and where did it come from? As far as I can tell, it doesn't show up in the Baijiaxing (not that the Baijiaxing is the be all and end all of Chinese surnames...), which must mean that it developed into a surname after it was written, or that it was maybe the surname of some foreigners that didn't have a presence in China until after it was written or something? Or else it's just so rare that the writers of the Baijiaxing didn't feel it necessary to mention (in which case, might it not have died out by now, over 1000 years later?)

It's extremely rare. I've never come across it "in the wild" before and the only famous bearer given in the Wikipedia article is 揭猛, who I've never heard of before. Apparently there's some connexion between the name and the city of Jieyang in the Teochew-speaking region of Guangdong, and that's where the name is most common today.

[Anonimulo]

Hey, out of curiosity, do you know the outcome of my last name from Late Middle Chinese to other Chinese languages? Like, Jiē in Putonghua but, what in Yue or Wu?

[Rui]

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E6%8F%AD is a start. They don't have Wu (or any other Chinese language actually), but they do have Cantonese...and Vietnamese, Japanese, and Korean.

[Ser]

It's been a while since I tangled with this and I have access neither to Pulleyblank's or Baxter's reconstructions at the moment. But here's what I think you get:

*skrel > *skrej
*skrej > *kɛj [phonetically something like *kəɨj according to Pulleyblank]
*kɛj > *kiɛ
*kiɛ > [tɕiɛ] (PY jie)

As for tone, I think it would be first tone (i.e. [55]), but I'm not sure about the effect of the final. (The preinitial probably drops without leaving any trace.) As it so happens, there is an existing Chinese surname pronounced jiē, namely 揭 "raise; announce;uncover". It's a rare one, however (although not a rare character).

FWIW, I "translated" my surname. The first part is an element meaning "bridge", so I use 橋 Qiáo, which is rare enough to provoke comment, but not so rare that people refuse to accept it.

According to Baxter, the initial drops after pre-initial *s- unless the initial is a coronal, so you get: *skre- > *sre- > Middle Chinese ʂe-.

About *-l, Baxter says that "[‎i]t is also quite possible that Old Chinese also had the codas *-l or *-r or both, but these are difficult to reconstruct from Chinese evidence alone". According to Schuessler's ABC Etymological Dictionary of Old Chinese, Sino-Tibetan *-l is often found as *-i or *-n in Old Chinese, giving examples like Old Chinese 戲 *haih Written Tibetan 'kʰyal Lushai *kʰaals,
OC 虫 *hməiʔ WT sbrul Lushai *ruul Written Burmese mrwe,
OC 何 *gâiʔ WT bkal;
OC塵 *drən WT rdul,
OC 炭 *thân WT tʰal.

I guess we could try going for both options:

OC *skren > MC ʂen^平
MC ʂen^平 > Standard Mandarin shān ʂan

OC *skrej > MC ʂej^平
MC ʂej^平 > Standard Mandarin shāi ʂaj

...And well... There's the surname 山 Shān... But the Chinese don't use that much as a surname as the Japanese, isn't it?