tips for choosing a Chinese name for your OC when you don’t know Chinese

This is a meta for gifset trade with @purple-fury! Maybe you would like to trade something with me? You can PM me if so!

Choosing a Chinese name, if you don’t know a Chinese language, is difficult, but here’s a secret for you: choosing a Chinese name, when you do know a Chinese language, is also difficult. So, my tip #1 is: Relax. Did you know that Actual Chinese People choose shitty names all the dang time? It’s true!!! Just as you, doubtless, have come across people in your daily life in your native language that you think “God, your parents must have been on SOME SHIT when they named you”, the same is true about Chinese people, now and throughout history. If you choose a shitty name, it’s not the end of the world! Your character’s parents now canonically suck at choosing a name. There, we fixed it!

However. Just because you should not drive yourself to the brink of the grave fretting over choosing a Chinese name for a character, neither does that mean you shouldn’t care at all. Especially, tip #2, Never just pick some syllables that vaguely sound Chinese and call it a day. That shit is awful and tbh it’s as inaccurate and racist as saying “ching chong” to mimic the Chinese language. Examples: Cho Chang from Harry Potter, Tenten from Naruto, and most notorious of all, Fu Manchu and his daughter Fah lo Suee (how the F/UCK did he come up with that one).

So where do you begin then? Well, first you need to pick your character’s surname. This is actually not too difficult, because Chinese actually doesn’t have that many surnames in common use. One hundred surnames cover over eighty percent of China’s population, and in local areas especially, certain surnames within that one hundred are absurdly common, like one out of every ten people you meet is surnamed Wang, for example. Also, if you’re making an OC for an established media franchise, you may already have the surname based on who you want your character related to. Finally, if you’re writing an ethnically Chinese character who was born and raised outside of China, you might only want their surname to be Chinese, and give them a given name from the language/culture of their native country; that’s very very common.

If you don’t have a surname in mind, check out the Wikipedia page for the list of common Chinese surnames, roughly the top one hundred. If you’re not going to pick one of the top one hundred surnames, you should have a good reason why. Now you need to choose a romanization system. You’ll note that the Wikipedia list contains variant spellings. If your character is a Chinese-American (or other non-Chinese country) whose ancestors emigrated before the 1950s (or whose ancestors did not come from mainland China), their name will not be spelled according to pinyin. It might be spelled according to Wade-Giles romanization, or according to the name’s pronunciation in other Chinese languages, or according to what the name sounds like in the language of the country they immigrated to. (The latter is where you get spellings like Lee, Young, Woo, and Law.)  A huge proportion of emigration especially came from southern China, where people spoke Cantonese, Min, Hakka, and other non-Mandarin languages.

So, for example, if you want to make a Chinese-Canadian character whose paternal source of their surname immigrated to Canada in the 20s, don’t give them the surname Xie, spelled that way, because #1 that spelling didn’t exist when their first generation ancestor left China and #2 their first generation ancestor was unlikely to have come from a part of China where Mandarin was spoken anyway (although still could have! that’s up to you). Instead, name them Tse, Tze, Sia, Chia, or Hsieh.

If you’re working with a character who lives in, or who left or is descended from people who left mainland China in the 1960s or later; or if you’re working with a historical or mythological setting, then you are going to want to use the pinyin romanization. The reason I say that you should use pinyin for historical or mythological settings is because pinyin is now the official or de facto romanization system for international standards in academia, the United Nations, etc. So if you’re writing a story with characters from ancient China, or medieval China, use pinyin, even though not only pinyin, but the Mandarin pronunciations themselves didn’t exist back then. Just… just accept this. This is one of those quirks of having a non-alphabetic language.

(Here’s an “exceptions” paragraph: there are various well known Chinese names that are typically, even now, transliterated in a non-standard way: Confucius, Mencius, the Yangtze River, Sun Yat-sen, etc. Go ahead and use these if you want. And if you really consciously want to make a Cantonese or Hakka or whatever setting, more power to you, but in that case you better be far beyond needing this tutorial and I don’t know why you’re here. Get. Scoot!)

One last point about names that use the ü with the umlaut over it. The umlaut ü is actually pretty critical for the meaning because wherever the ü appears, the consonant preceding it also can be used with u: lu/lü, nu/nü, etc. However, de facto, lots of individual people, media franchises, etc, simply drop the umlaut and write u instead when writing a name in English, such as “Lu Bu” in the Dynasty Warriors franchise in English (it should be written Lü Bu). And to be fair, since tones are also typically dropped in Latin script and are just as critical to the meaning and pronunciation of the original, dropping the umlaut probably doesn’t make much difference. This is kind of a choice you have to make for yourself. Maybe you even want to play with it! Maybe everybody thinks your character’s surname is pronounced “loo as in loo roll” but SURPRISE MOFO it’s actually lü! You could Do Something with that. Also, in contexts where people want to distinguish between u and ü when typing but don’t have easy access to a keyboard method of making the ü, the typical shorthand is the letter v. 

Alright! So you have your surname and you know how you want it spelled using the Latin alphabet. Great! What next?

Alright, so, now we get to the hard part: choosing the given name. No, don’t cry, I know baby I know. We can do this. I believe in you.

Here are some premises we’re going to be operating on, and I’m not entirely sure why I made this a numbered list:

You’re going to stick with the same romanization system (or lack thereof) as you’ve used for the surname. In the interests of time, I’m going to focus on pinyin only.

First let’s take a look at some real and actual Chinese names and talk about what they mean, why they might have been chosen, and also some fictional OC names that I’ve come up with that riff off of these actual Chinese names. And then we’ll go over some resources and also some pitfalls. Hopefully you can learn by example! Fun!!!

Let’s start with two great historical strategists: Zhuge Liang and Zhou Yu, and the names I picked for some (fictional) sons of theirs. Then I will be talking about Sun Shangxiang and Guan Yinping, two historical-legendary women of the same era, and what I named their fictional daughters. And finally I’ll be talking about historical Chinese pirate Gan Ning and what I named his fictional wife and fictional daughter. Uh, this could be considered spoilers for my novel Clouds and Rain and associated one-shots in that universe, so you probably want to go and read that work… and its prequels… and leave lots of comments and kudos first and then come back. Don’t worry, I’ll wait.

(I’m just kidding you don’t need to know a thing about my work to find this useful.)

Keep reading

I had to remove the links from the main post in order for it to show up in tag search, so here are the links to dictionaries and resources as a reblog!

Advice on pan-Asian themes/countries

We continue to receive asks/submissions that ask the same basic question: Can I have/create a pan-Asian country in my work? (We get this question at least two times a week, no joke!)

And the answer is: Our recommendation is that you don’t create pan-Asian anything in your works. So, no. Don’t. Please don’t. Just don’t.

But since we keep getting questions about it, we thought we’d specifically address why pan-Asian themes/cultures/countries are problematic.

GENERIC ASIAN CULTURE DOESN’T EXIST There’s an assumption that there is a generic “Asian culture” that exists. It doesn’t. It goes along with this racist idea that Asians look the same. White supremacy often takes the tack of looking at Asians as robots, and you see see this mentality continually espoused in articles about the education systems in East Asia, or the factories in China and India, or the idea that Asians “naturally” gravitate towards mathematics and engineering. These are lies. The emasculation of the Asian man and the hypersexualization of the Asian woman also treats us all like robots or dolls instead of human beings.

The continent of Asia is gigantic. It boasts the greatest population in the world. It’s huge and it’s extremely diverse. Its diaspora is also extremely diverse.

India’s population alone is over 1 billion. There are at least 17 languages spoken there and over 900 dialects. It’s the birthplace of four major world religions: Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism and Jainism. India has more than 2000 ethnic groups and EVERY major world religion is represented there. It’s one of the most diverse countries in the world.

Even trying to define a generic “Indian” culture (both in India and among its diaspora) is very difficult to do! So it simply isn’t possible to have a generic “Asian culture” when it’s nigh impossible to do that for ONE country in Asia. India is not a monolith. Indian diaspora is not a monolith. Asia is also not a monolith. “Asian culture” doesn’t exist. When people write pan-Asian themes/countries/cultures into their works, they’re propagating this myth.

HISTORY AND CONTEXT MATTER This doesn’t mean there isn’t a lot of cultural similarity between certain regions in Asia or that there’s never any cultural sharing or melding. If two countries are located close to each other geographically, there’s a good chance that some ideas and traditions have made their way across both countries. This is the same all over the world.

But sometimes, this sharing of culture is not mutual. Asia is no stranger to forced assimilation, colonization, imperialism, genocide, war, and the oppression of native and indigenous peoples.

Pan-Asian works ignore this historical context. They give no regard to the atrocities that have taken place and often align themselves with imperialism. In fact, pan-Asianism (that is, the unification of Asia) was often used in Japanese imperialist propaganda, which sought to unite Asia under Japanese supremacy.*

Also, many traditions, religions and cultural practices have origins in the geography, climate, and ecosystems surrounding the people groups in question. By using only some aspects and not others, you run the risk of eliminating the very reasons why certain cultural traditions might have come to be.

BUT WHAT ABOUT SFF OR ALTERNATE HISTORY? Again, even if your novel involves distant planets “inspired” by currently existing countries or an alternate history, we strongly advise against pan-Asian countries or cultures. If it isn’t possible for many currently existing countries in Asia to have a single homogenous culture, then how is it realistic for the countries in your work to have pan-Asian cultures or themes?

People are often proud of their cultural traditions and history, including things like traditional dress, architecture, religions, and customs. If you are not Asian, then it isn’t your place to separate people groups from their countries and cultural traditions for your artistic work. Asia is not your playground. 

FURTHER RESOURCES

Here’s a submission we had from a reader on why pan-Asian themes are harmful: Representation in Avatar the Last Airbender.

Here’s a link to our cultural appropriation tag.

*Please do not ever use Japanese imperialism as an excuse for why white supremacy “isn’t so bad” or “White supremacists aren’t the only racist ones!” Yes, there have been multiple people groups in history, on every continent, that have done atrocious things. None of it justifies or excuses current white supremacy. That’s false equivalence, and we do not play that game here at WWC. 

Here’s a post I wrote (from ThisIsNotJapan) about this very issue.

10 Questions to Ask When You Create a Fictional Culture

The way I build worlds is by collecting cool stuff from the history, myth and people around me. I blend these details with my own imagination, and create my own cultures.

Normally there are a few particular cultures that interest me at a given time. I read whatever I can find about them, their environment, their traditions and their myths. The interesting details filter into the new world I’m creating (example: at one time, Venetian widows could only remarry on the stroke of midnight).

In the long term, there is nothing more inspiring and challenging than visiting foreign cultures yourself (especially if you can get far beyond your comfort zone to do it). This is the truest way to experience culture, and I really believe it shows in your writing.

But reading (non-fiction, myth/legend/fairytales, as well as the classics like Dune and Lord of the Rings) and watching documentaries/films can get you a long way toward filling up on your inspiration tank.

It’s important to remember: Culture in fiction isn’t a rod to get a point across. At its best, it is something beautiful, otherworldly, amusing, and sobering. The more layers and contradicts your culture has, the more real it will be.

Some questions you might ask yourself are:

(5 BONUS QUESTIONS HERE)

This is a map of Asia. North Americans, you may notice this map is not solely comprised of Japan, Korea, China and Thailand. People in the UK, you may notice India is not  a continent. That is, if those of you who generalize entire continents can even pinpoint India on a map. Indians are Asian, gasp! And not all brown skinned people are Indian, also, gasp! There are an alarming amount of people, of all ages, from all backgrounds, who seem to be unable to process this.

I’m ethnically Asian. Since Asia is an extremely large continent, I could be from any number of countries. I am neither from India, China, Korea, Japan or Pakistan, yet not so surprisingly, I am still Asian. 

Yes, there are commonalities across regions, through the conflation of cultures, colonialism, globalization, transnationalism and movement of diasporas. Sometimes these are all the same thing. Rickshaws, rice and curry can be found across the continent. But let’s not overgeneralize. You can also find Buddhists, Catholics, Muslims and Hindus across Asia. Cantonese Speaking Chinese Muslims! English Speaking Indian Jews! 

No, we are not all the same. Orientalism? (Please look up Edward Said for basic concepts) No thank you. 

Geography, people. It’s important. 

This pops up on my dash every so often. I reblog it again, not just because I wrote it, but because nothing has changed since I first posted this.

What’s cool about Iran is that it falls in 3 different regions of Asia so depending on what part of Iran you’re in, you can kind of get culture shocked a bit. The central and western part of the country is West Asia, the north east is Central Asia, and the southeast is in South Asia. 

To the folks wondering about Russia being included, I want to mention that the cultural debates and angst about that has been going on for CENTURIES. While France has been pretty fetishized all the way back from Peter the Great, there is no question that we are not Europe, even with that influence showing really obviously in historical seats of power like St. Petersburg. Nonetheless, the whole country was under control of the Mongols (The Golden Horde) from roughly 1242 to 1480, and that left an enormous Mongolian and Tatar heritage that remains to this day. The ancient Scythians are huge in the cultural imagination as well. And besides… look at the Russians who are outside the standard “Kievan Rus” phenotype (which most folks assume is how all Russians look.) 

Here are three of the 30 distinct ethnic groups in Siberia alone:

Buryat grandfather, photo by Alexander Newby

Evenk children, photo by Evgenia Arbugaeva

Young Yakut couple, photographer unknown

boom

AS SOMEONE WITH NORTHERN IRANIAN (AZERBAIJANI)/RUSSIAN/ HAZARA-PERSIAN/ UYGHUR-CHINESE ANCESTRY THIS IS SUCH A BEAUTIFUL POST 

And that’s why sometimes you’ll see a person with curly black hair, pale skin, and hazel-green eyes (my grand-father’s sister) who turn out to be Chinese. Mad recessive genes game at play, I swear. Mongols, they really got around. 

This is a topic that’s probably well overdue being discussed but hasn’t been for a number of reasons, not the least of which being that both mods are white and from cultures that don’t really get considered “exotic”, so everything that follows is based off observation and listening to people who do suffer under this stigma.

It frequently goes hand in hand with tokenism, since the included character’s minority status must be “justified” somehow:

[Text of the comment above: “The ONLY way a person can choose a dark skinned avatar is to pick a Witch Doctor!? …what’s the real message here?”]

Frequently, it’s not just the people but also their religious or mythological figures who get horribly misrepresented in the name of trying to blend titillation with a ridiculous claim of authenticity.

We already covered Sheva Alomar in Resident Evil 5, the Witchdoctor in Diablo 3 and Kali in SMITE - but those are actually pretty straight forward examples.  Frequently this trope feels the need to “whiten” the character, gets combined with evil is sexy or feels the need to make them “special” to warrant inclusion.

And these are just examples where there’s named characters - rather than nameless secondary characters or background decoration.

Some of examples of living real world groups who get caught up in this, particularly in the sexual exotification of women from the group:

All of these groups already have more than enough problems with harassment and oppression without pop media reducing them to one-dimensional stereotypes.

- wincenworks

Pre-emptive Rhetoric Debunking:

A guide to body-language etiquette around the world.

THE NOSE ONE USED TO CONFUSE ME SO MUCH

I remember reading so many books as a kid where the characters “touched a finger to their nose” or “laid a finger alongside their nose” and from context I guessed it meant “secret” but I was so confused because I had never seen anyone do that and it seemed awkward and silly to me.

Now I FINALLY have an explanation!

I would have never figured that out.

For a long time I thought maybe it was just a weird way of describing a “shhh” finger gesture.

I still see some people doing the thumb point in KL, but most people use the index finger now because well, times change.