English Names In China

I work at a preschool in China as an English teacher. I am surrounded by the Chinese language but I'm still pretty clueless about it.

This week I've been thinking about names. Here are a few of the nice English names that the schoolchildren have:

Here are the name cards of some students
 with some unique English names

Its so useful that students have English names in addition to their Chinese names- remembering 120 Chinese names like 'Wang Jia Yi' which is Wendy's Chinese name, would be quite a struggle.

Whilst I am thankful for their binomial nomenclature, having a name that's written in English and having 'an English name' are not one and the same. 

Example: The child who is called “Chocolate’’. 

Whilst I can't deny that her name is written in English... its not a name I'd expect to hear anywhere in the UK! Equally eyebrow-raising the name Herny- though I think he’s supposed to be Henry. If I could communicate with the Chinese teachers well enough, I’d certainly advise them of this simple correction. But we don’t speak each other’s languages so we’ll have to forget it.

(As a side note, its really strange not being able to communicate with people you wok alongside with. But that's a side effect of moving to China and not bothering to learn Chinese...)

Since the second term has just begun, we’ve had a few new students join us. Many of them have fine English names such as Wendy, Effie and Earnest, which makes one wonder whether the hipster trend of giving retro names to children has reached China? Though I don’t think China is very up to date with Western trends, some of which also include sit-down toilets and an uncensored Internet.

There are times when children arrive at school and don't yet have an English name. Sometimes its my duty as their English teacher to choose one for them. Its not a duty we have to carry out too often, but recently it was something I was asked to do. 

It came with a translated instruction from his Dad: “He’s naughty, give him a naughty name”

I ended up calling him 'Robert' after Robert Barathian from Game of Thrones. This would be a suitable name for him and it would cause mild amusement to me to name a kid after an old fat guy. (That’s what you get for being naughty, new-kid Robert!)

But then, translated from his Dad: ‘’So what does this name mean?’’

This put me on the spot. Its not too common to know the meaning of names in England, but his father didn’t seem satisfied by this answer. I’d have to make something up, and considered saying ‘it means producer of many bastards’, as his namesake Robert Barathian was.. but I followed instead with ''This name means 'brave man' '' which is 0% imaginative, but I was getting bored by this point.



But what if I want a meaningful name for my child?

There are children at the school who's parents have chosen English names for them which do have a meaning. There's one called Happy (he usually looks glum) and even one called Winner (who cries a lot...). These might be suitable names in Chinese, but being realistic I don’t think they work as names in English.

This got me thinking about the meaning of the students' Chinese names. What did they mean?

Having a look at the names above, used an app called Pleco and drew in the Chinese characters to get them translated. The results were interesting.

Chinese is written with symbols or characters, but there is no alphabet. Therefore it is my understanding that any character in a name will also have another meaning. Going back to Wendy, her Chinese name is Wang Jia Yi. All three of these symbols could be surnames... but this seems unlikely. Maybe its different in Chinese? Or her name could be something like Good Suitable King? I'm prepared to be wrong on this because that sounds a bit of an odd thing to name a child.

(Then again, China is very odd to a European such as myself)

As I translated more names, it became clearer that even though the characters in the names did have   meanings, it was likely they weren't direct translations. Just like my girlfriend's name, Holly, is not the same as a prickly bush. The bush and she have the same name, but she's not actually named after a plant. I made this decision after reading the following name translation:

"Hi I'm Grady, but you can call me
'Dragon with the Aspiration of a Person of Extraordinary Powers'
if you want to use my real name"

Whilst it would be exciting to be called 'Dragon with the Aspiration of a Person of Extraordinary Powers' I don't think the direct translation always makes sense.

There are other parents who have seemingly embraced the creative availability of an alphabet and just invented a name for their child. Linson, Javis and Jasdon are examples of this. Whist unconventional, I think they are all quite nice names.

And then there's the parent came up with 'Hoenwoo'. I like to imagine this name as a potential seven letter score with Scrabble letters that someone was determined to prove to be a real name. But I don't think Chinese people play Scrabble. It would just be a bag of tiles with characters which each meant a whole word.. I am digressing...

Whilst the children have some unusual names- 'Herny', 'Quintus', 'Grady', or get named after foods, 'Chocolate', 'Sushi', 'Cheese' at least they don't have stripper names. Wait- some of the teachers do though, such as 'Coco', 'Lucky', and 'Candy'.


I don't think I'll ever get it. Let's move on.

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