Please, explain, as I am fascinated by this.
Chinabros, why and how do you chose western names?
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Easier to pronunciate and write Western letters than hanzis
Reading and writing, yes, but pronounciation should not be an issue if the transliterated version of the name is provided.
I mean if someone writes his name in hanzis, then westerner might not know how to pronunciate it if he only sees it written in hanzis. Translitteration of course is different.
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Easier to pronunciate and write Western letters than hanzis
Reading and writing, yes, but pronounciation should not be an issue if the transliterated version of the name is provided.
I mean if someone writes his name in hanzis, then westerner might not know how to pronunciate it if he only sees it written in hanzis. Translitteration of course is different.
What I wonder is why they don't keep their names and just write them in the most intelligible way. I mean, they are not that difficult to pronounce, even easier than some non-English European names.
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First, they are pronounced differently by the Chinese in different regions of China.
Second, when they are in the USA, some of them learned the culture of putting the pronouciation of their names as the priority. In China, the priority is the meaning.
In US, most names have no real meanings. It is opposite in China.
Easier to pronunciate and write Western letters than hanzis
Reading and writing, yes, but pronounciation should not be an issue if the transliterated version of the name is provided.
I mean if someone writes his name in hanzis, then westerner might not know how to pronunciate it if he only sees it written in hanzis. Translitteration of course is different.
What I wonder is why they don't keep their names and just write them in the most intelligible way. I mean, they are not that difficult to pronounce, even easier than some non-English European names.
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What I wonder is why they don't keep their names and just write them in the most intelligible way. I mean, they are not that difficult to pronounce, even easier than some non-English European names.
Well I agree with that. If some name is written in hanzis, Western people don't know how to say it, but if it is translitterated then no problem.
In my native language there is rolling R (think of Spanish R, it is different than English R). I know one Chinese girl who took a name that is in my native language. For long time I thought that her name is written with L, because she couldn't say rolling R. I don't know any Chinese who can pronunciate rolling R.
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Usually in English classes in China the teacher gets them to pick English names. My wife picked Shirley. When she got to the US she realized that it was an out of date name and so switched back to her Chinese name, which isn't too hard to pronounce in English.
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We have so many Chinese in our program all of them dropped their western name by the first week of class
Hong Kong bros don't. They use their western names even in china. So I think region matters. None of the kids I know from Shanghai bother with a western name.