When i started learning mandarin in college, my proffesor gave me a chinese name to match the sound of my english name, but wheni told some chinese students on campus, they chuckled and said it was a silly name.
my name is Harold Norman B, so 不海荣 was the name she gave me. should i maybe look through wikipedia for a famous person and steal their name? should my surname maybe match my real name somehow? what about if i needed to use this name for offical documents? how does that work?
What are some good names?
There’s actually a massive amount of work that goes into picking a Chinese name if you want a good one!
However, it just requires a lot of knowledge, and so I’d recommend going with this website Get a Chinese Name. I just wrote “Brown” as your last name because of the B, and the only Chinese last name I can think off of the top of my head is Bi anyway. I think the last name isn’t as important. But this site will ask your name, birthday, and what category of names you want. You can run it over and over again and put together a list of names that you like. This website basically picked characters that are roughly close to your name’s pronunciation, so it miiiight not sound 100% authentic, but it’s still not bad.
When I picked my name, I actually mixed and matched characters based on what I liked for meaning and pronunciation. HOWEVER, I’ve been told, and I always see the reaction, that my name actually sounds unusual in Mandarin. At this point though, I’ve had my name for 7 years and it’d feel wrong to abandon it and pick a different name lol.
If you want bonus points for your name picking strategy, sometimes parents will pick characters that contain an element that your zodiac lacks. In my case, my chart is missing water and fire, so I should’ve picked characters that contain those radicals, but I didn’t because I didn’t know at the time lol.
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This page also has some good tips, and suggestions: 150 Popular Chinese Names for Boys and Girls: Meanings and Culture
More names here: Most Popular Chinese Names (Trends in 2025 and Across the Decades) - ImproveMandarin
I think you could wait for a native that knows you well to help you choose a new name ?
Ideally someone that you have get to known, it will be good memory and a funny way to engage with the culture. My very first Chinese friend debated my name over the phone with her whole family, it apparently sounds a bit odd but I’ll never change it because it’s now really meaningful to me.
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