Guide
Native name vs transliteration
One of these is a person. The other is a row in a table used to pronounce foreigners on the evening news. Teachers copy the table because it is fast. Natives hear the difference in a second.
What a native name is
Structure first. A family name from a real list (百家姓, plus a handful of 复姓 like 欧阳), then a given name of one or two characters that people actually use. Length in ordinary life: two or three characters. 张伟. 李明. 陆克文. 费正清.
陆克文 happens to map to Kevin. 费正清 happened to map to John Fairbank. The mapping is optional. The grammar is not. That is why this site will Keep a name that “sounds a bit foreign” if it still sits on 姓 + 名, and Kill a smoother-sounding 凯文.
What transliteration is
The Xinhua scheme assigns Chinese graphs to foreign syllables so a newscaster can read Barack, Olivia, or Smith aloud. 约翰 is John. 玛丽 is Mary. 凯文 is Kevin. 莎拉 is Sarah. The 间隔号 · marks the boundary in a longer foreign string: 罗莎蒙德·派克.
Those graphs are chosen for sound, not for being a surname. 约 is not a working 姓. 玛 is a foreign-name flag. 尔 is how you know someone pasted -el or -er onto the page.
The fingerprints
- No 百家姓 surname in first position.
- Two or three syllables that only exist as English-name spellings.
- Food and mascot collisions (莎拉 / 沙拉, 山姆 / Shamu).
- Caption language (好天使, 宝贝, 公主).
- A middle dot.
- Four or more characters with no compound surname to justify the length.
- 娜 / 莉 / 丽 doing all the gender work on an otherwise empty given name.
This is not a generator
We will not mint you a “better” name on this page. Run the checker on what you already have. If you want a name natives would actually use, that is NativeChineseName.com.