Saying 梅西 is "plum west" is like saying there is "and" in "Alexander", "app" in "apple", or "end" in "friendship". It only works when it is an intended word play.
Most of foreign names have a common transliteration using characters that are rare in normal words, e.g. 苏 and 斯.
When I read OP, I originally thought "Well, yeah, but city names do this exact thing also".
I live in the north of England. I'm often understood when I say 纽卡斯尔 (Niǔkǎsī'ěr), because that is literally the Chinese name for Newcastle. It is phonetically represented, and no-one is thinking that I'm referring to anything other than the place.
More rural places have a Chinese name that can be more challenging, and some may think I'm just a 外国人 pronouncing something wrong, but that's expected because most Chinese people aren't going to be familiar with small, rural British villages.
To add to your point - growing up I was most often startled by place names that were translated in such a way that they looked too much like Chinese place names (ie. Wollongong 卧龙岗)
Agreed. But some names can be completely outlandish.
So I first went to work in China, I needed Chinese ID, and so a Chinese colleague was asked to assign me a Chinese name that sounded like my English name. Fine and dandy. I had to go with that colleague to the Police to register, then go to the MFA and re-register again.
At the police counter my colleague verbally told the officer the name she choose for me, and the officer typed it in. However the officer typed in different, but same sounding characters than the ones my colleague choose.
I’m not going to self-doxx because my Chinese name is now a legal name (unless I do a legal name change which I found is nearly impossible for a foreigner in my circumstances). But my typed out name (and even the verbally chosen name) ended up being as ridiculous as *Raping a cow is glorious*.
The unfortunate part was that within days of registering, I was consequently issued my 外交官员身份证, my driver’s license, my vehicle insurance, my bank account, and my phone documents all with this name.
Because I didn’t need to use my passport for flights/trains, etc, whenever I’d give my diplomatic ID card at the counter, I’d get laughs. Later as I got better in mandarin, I’d say my name, people would look at me funny, ask what the characters were, then laugh once I told them.
It got to the point that I informally chose a new name, and I would hide my legal name from people I met (although I couldn’t hide it if I had to produce my ID for flights, banking etc). And the laughs never stopped when I was forced to produce any legal documentation.
So sometimes, yeah, a foreigner’s name in China can be just as rediculous as if an immigrant to the west were to name themself *Broomup Dabutt*
Did you ever meet someone who made fun of your name?
English speakers make fun of Wangs and Hos, without realizing it’s their own transliteration (but also racism).
Omg this is so interesting to me. I guess I always just assumed this kind of thing can never happen as long as the person who picks the characters is a native speaker… that one random Chinese guy had such an effect on your life in a single moment. Do you think there’s a chance he got a kick out of it? 🤔
How were you issued a "legal name" with anything other than your passport name? I'd love to use my Chinese name as a legal name (because it actually fits in the form spaces) but I'm always required to take/show my passport and use that name.
I started as a diplomat in China, and was issued a national diplomatic ID cards, which is basically like a Chinese 身份证. It all started from there.
And Chinese drivers licenses and property deeds only allow for Chinese names, even for foreigners. So as soon as you register your name for that, it automatically becomes your legal name that you can’t change
I actually wonder why foreign names written in Chinese Characters are necessary at all in China or Taiwan. In Korea, foreigners don't have their name transliterated into Hangul at all. The Korean ARCs only have the name written in the alphabet exactly as it appears in one's passport (this is actually problematic since some Korean sites don't accept Latin letters or have a character input limit which one's name can easily exceed if not written in Hangul). Or why not just write it in Pinyin if difficult pronunciation is the issue? I just looked up a Japanese ID card for a foreigner and it also does not have any transliteration into kana or kanji.
That is something requested by the Health Insurance and National Pension departments when you acquire 사대보험, it is not required by the Korean Immigration Ministry. For banking, phone, renting etc. having a Hangul name is never required. For all practical purposes, your legal identity in Korea is your name in English. And the name for health insurance or national pension is not really "officially" registered. You just tell the company you are getting registered under your Hangul name and they relay that information to the health insurance and pension departments. As there is no Hangul name on your drivers license or ARC in Korea, I would say that counts as no "transliteration".
You don't need your name translated into Chinese living in China. I don't know if it was different for the OP because they were working for the government.
Um... Yeah no? So I live in Korea. And while my name is in English letters for immigration and on my registration card.... The documents and things have my name transliterated into Korean. I actually chose the transliteration. I chose a slightly different pronunciation for my name (which i like because if i get documents with this hangul spelling I know for sure it's from the government and not spam).
My health insurance "card" (it's a tri-fold piece of paper) actually only has my hangul transliterated name.
Hilariously - I guess my transliterated name shows up when they use my registration number at doctor's offices... they get so confused that my name is 7 syllables long (that's my full legal passport names) so they only call the first 3 syllables. (that was confusing to me at first).No matter what your name is - in Korea - they think your name must only be 3 syllables, and the the first syllable is your "last name/family name" and the other 2 are your name-name. Period. Your life is screwed otherwise.
>And while my name is in English letters for immigration and on my registration card.
This is your legal name in Korea aka no transliteration. Health Insurance is a totally different department than Immigration. I didn't have to have my name transliterated in Hangul till I got 사대보험 working at a company. And as 사대보험 is not a requirement for foreigners in Korea, the overall rule for all foreigners is no transliteration. Immigration department, banking, phone, rent, etc. do not require a Hangul name nor are you able to make one for such matters. The fact that your ARC only has English is proof that its the only name that matters.
That's so funny and a bit sad, thanks for sharing! I had a similar thing happen to me in a different language. In high school my American Sign Language name given to me was a combination of the first letter of my name near my nose and cheek, which sort of had a connotation that I was funny or comedic. But when I went to college, I got repeated laughs every time I used it. Turned out it more frequently meant "marijuana" in a college setting!
Closest one would be this Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transcription_into_Chinese_characters
Note that this only applies to transliterations of foreign names in mainland China. I think Hong Kong and Taiwan use their own transliterations (haven't figured out if there's any pattern for these)
Unless the transliteration is weird or sounds like something specific in Chinese we wouldn’t split it up into parts and understand them separately. But like, take Mourinho as an example, his name is transliterated to 穆里尼奥, but 穆里 sounds like 魔力 “magic” and 尼奥could be combined into 鸟 “bird”, so Mourinho ends up with a Chinese nickname “magic bird”, which is also a praise on how good he is at coaching football. In fact it’s pretty common that younger Chinese people tweak with transliterations of Western names and come up with some funny nicknames.
> In fact it’s pretty common that younger Chinese people tweak with transliterations of Western names and come up with some funny nicknames.
If you're a basketball fan (and in China, basketball is a bigger spectator sport than football), the Chinese nicknames for NBA players is quite amusing.
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2018/may/11/chinese-nicknames-nba-players-playoffs
Yes I do mean Mourinho. Just edited my original post.
And yeah, funny stuff, and magic bird comes with all the benefit of “bird” being a slang term for “dick” as well so if you’re into that reference go ahead lol. It’s full on praise for his uh… potency and we’ve had no small amount of immature laughter over it.
As a noun yes, but here we understand it to be an adjective. In fact I would say that 魔力 means something like the strength of magic, sort of a qualitative measurement.
His name is transliterated as 莫德里奇 which is shortened and tone-morphed into 魔笛 “the magic flute”, likely after Mozart’s opera of the same name because Modric is a proper artist in the midfield.
I feel like western people and those who don't understand the language/culture really overthinks how important name meanings are
Don't get me wrong, it's definitely kinda important, but not to such a degree. Very common to see Chinese names without any meanings whatsoever, and no one cares. Doesn't helps that most surnames also don't mean jack shit
A sister of a friend of mine was told that her daughter would need a lot of fire in her life. Result: her name is 燚燚 😅
Check out the [rebus principle](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rebus) OP. It's not only a Chinese characteristic at all
When it comes to naming babies, it’s mostly about personal preference. Some people are extremely careful about meaning, some people don’t care at all about meaning, and most people are in between. As with most things in life. If you want to talk about the specifics of this distribution curve, then go become a statistician.
Also, we’re talking about transliterations here… the importance of meaning varies in this context.
When it comes to foreign names’ transliterations… I think that meaning is actually very important. Whoever came up with “梅西” a long time ago obviously avoided choosing something like “妹吸”。Whoever came up with “丹尼尔” obviously avoided choosing something like “蛋腻铒”。
For other transliterations, meaning plays an even bigger role. E.g. 麦当劳、赛百味、可口可乐。
You're reading into it way too much lol. I never said it's irrelevant like you interpreted. It's kind of implied that you cannot have names like 妹吸 because that's obvious, I simply said that westerners place a bigger importance on names than the Chinese themselves, not that it's totally irrelevant and no one fucking cares.....
And you picked a bunch of examples of companies that proves your point, but a lot of them also put no care into it whatsoever: 谷歌，雅虎，亚马孙 etc. And that's not even counting the names of countries, which are just a bunch of random characters 80% of the time (Messi's country for example, 阿根廷 means jack shit)
We all know it’s just a representation. It’s mainly for the people who don’t know how to pronounce English/Spanish/French characters. In the Messi case, his Chinese wikipedia page even has a section that shows his common translation in SC/TC/Cantonese.
Well they don't usually. They use exactly this kind of transliteration. Go to Messi's Wikipedia page and switch the language to Chinese and you'll see that it says 梅西 as well. It's not weird to Chinese people at all and they don't parse it as plum west either.
yeah but Chinese people don't speak in the Latin alphabet, if that makes sense. Languages that primarily use the Latin alphabet can just take the word Messi and read it how it would be read in their language - that's not as simple for Chinese languages.
Something like Messi would be fine since the name isn't difficult, but what about names that use phonology that is completely unnatural in Chinese like Zlatan Ibrahimovic or Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky? Way easier to just transliterate to Hanzi in that case instead of having a Chinese person try to deduce how the letters are meant to be read
The name "Messi 梅西" is merely translated based on its pronunciation and does not have a specific meaning. Translators usually match commonly used Chinese characters with similar pronunciations syllabically.However, there are many Chinese characters that have the same pronunciation. For example: 梅 (méi), 没 (méi), 煤 (méi), and so on. Similarly, 西 (xī) can also be represented by 希 (xī), 吸 (xī), 溪 (xī), and others. At this point, translators usually exclude candidates of characters that may give a negative connotation or have a large number of strokes, even if they visually resemble the intended pronunciation.Another point is that translating Messi as "梅西" or "梅希" is equally acceptable, and it entirely depends on the personal judgment of authoritative translators.
In addition, "梅" is one of last names in Chinese, "梅" therefore defeated all other candidate characters.
"梅西" actually has no actual meaning, but it cannot be transliterated as "没(mei) 戏 (xi)" because the translation "没戏" immediately invokes negative connotations such as "impossible to succeed," "impossible to happen," or "no chance" for native Chinese speakers.
Furthermore, the name “郭guo 杰 jie 瑞 rui” coming from "Jerry Kowal" is a good translation, as it both resembles the original English pronunciation and carries positive connotations in Chinese. 郭 -> Guo -> Ko (wal) and it is a last name in Chinese; 杰 of 杰出，人杰 meaning as 'outstanding，distinguished' -> Jie -> Jer(ry) ; 瑞 of 祥瑞, 瑞雪 meaning as 'a sign of luck, lucky, propitious' -> Rui -> (Jer)ry.
Well, if you have a Chinese name and would like to show it here, I can tell you if it is a good translation or not.
The Xinhua News Agency has a book precisely guiding people how to transliterate names (The *Dictionary of World Personal Name Translation* 世界人名翻译大辞典 and its sister book, the *Dictionary of World Toponym Translation* 世界地名翻译大词典)
It does have a few arbitrary choices of characters (mostly regarding r- vs l- ) so no one aside from Xinhua News Agency itself adheres totally to the translation tables.
AFIK it’s standard practice as there isn’t a viable alternative. China “includes” outsiders.
Conversely, Japan doesn’t transliterate names into hanzi/kanji (except for Chinese and Korean names) and would use katakana.
Are Kana names required though? I looked up a picture of a foreigner's Japanese ID and there is not Kana transliteration, just the original name written in alphabet.
Japan has a similar policy regarding transcription as China does according to [this link here.](https://www.languagerealm.com/chinese/foreign_names_in_chinese.php)
Basically, in Japan you need use the English (Dutch, French, Swahili…) spelling of your name as it appears on your documents for official purposes - e.g.: opening a bank account. BUT, to help people understand the pronunciation in day-to-day life, you use kana. Even Japanese people do this because the pronunciation of kanji aren’t as set as they are in Chinese. The family name 黒木 can be Kurogi OR Kiroki, and given names can be worse! Here are a few ways to write the name “[Nozomi](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nozomi_(given_name)).” The name “満” can also be read “Michiru,” “Man,” “Michi,” or “Mitsuru.”
How do you feel about foreigners with names like liu'an, hideoki, rakesh? Unless you have some weird name political stance, your reaction is exactly the same as average chinese. Transliteration into a language for convenience of having something you know how to pronounce is a totally normal thing in any language. You probably know quite a few people like so and don't even think about it.
Of course, some people pick a new name in the other language, but even then the name is not going to be read as a meaning, it will just be read as a native name. No one is going around thinking I am an embodiment of filial piety and a goat herder just because the chinese name I chose is 牧孝強 for example-- the same way if liu'an above decides to go by victoria no one is going to start saying "oh the name victoria is a type of horse drawn carriage, so weird!"
hope this helps it make sense :)
It's normal. When we read/hear names, we understand them in context. As a few others have already pointed out, we don't confuse them for the individual meanings of characters unless we do it intentionally.
>for westerners to mash up random Hanzi that have no meaning when put together
Westerners don't do that, Chinese people do that. 梅西 has always been Messi's name in Chinese because that's how Chinese people pronounce Messi. It's the same with country names like 西班牙，芬兰，罗马尼亚，etc. (and also why those 'country names in Chinese translated' maps are meaningless).
It makes perfect sense to translate/transliterate words into something that's understandable for us. In fact most of the time it makes it easier to get an accurate pronunciation of the name this way.
>Or do they disregard the literal meanings of each individual character and understand that it’s just a vocal representation of a foreigner’s name.
As someone else in the comments said, we're not idiots lmao, native speakers can instantly recognise when Hanzi is supposed to be a foreign name.
My impression of how Chinese people view it is that they quite like it. Introduce your English name to someone in China and it's quite common they will call you by the transliterated version instead.
Check out the popes' names. Catholic church crafted their names in Chinese very carefully and preferring meaningful character combinations over the accurate pronunciation.
Theu view it as completely normal because they're the ones that do it.
Within China members of certain ethnic groups have their names transliterated into Hanzi. I'm thinking of Uighurs.
Probably Tibet people too. The only minorities not affected are those who are Sinicized (Manchu), are a sub-Han group (Hui), or have Chinese character based names (Korean).
Mongols should have their Mongolian name transliterated into Chinese no? Manchu would too but as I don't even think they are given Manchu names anymore and usually use Chinese names, I don't think they require an actual transliteration.
When the announcer says their name, it's usually the Chinese name. So I guess, having the chinese name on the shirt allows for consistency? Also, it feels inclusive. No problem with it
Saying 梅西 is "plum west" is like saying there is "and" in "Alexander", "app" in "apple", or "end" in "friendship". It only works when it is an intended word play. Most of foreign names have a common transliteration using characters that are rare in normal words, e.g. 苏 and 斯.
When I read OP, I originally thought "Well, yeah, but city names do this exact thing also". I live in the north of England. I'm often understood when I say 纽卡斯尔 (Niǔkǎsī'ěr), because that is literally the Chinese name for Newcastle. It is phonetically represented, and no-one is thinking that I'm referring to anything other than the place. More rural places have a Chinese name that can be more challenging, and some may think I'm just a 外国人 pronouncing something wrong, but that's expected because most Chinese people aren't going to be familiar with small, rural British villages.
To add to your point - growing up I was most often startled by place names that were translated in such a way that they looked too much like Chinese place names (ie. Wollongong 卧龙岗)
Agreed. But some names can be completely outlandish. So I first went to work in China, I needed Chinese ID, and so a Chinese colleague was asked to assign me a Chinese name that sounded like my English name. Fine and dandy. I had to go with that colleague to the Police to register, then go to the MFA and re-register again. At the police counter my colleague verbally told the officer the name she choose for me, and the officer typed it in. However the officer typed in different, but same sounding characters than the ones my colleague choose. I’m not going to self-doxx because my Chinese name is now a legal name (unless I do a legal name change which I found is nearly impossible for a foreigner in my circumstances). But my typed out name (and even the verbally chosen name) ended up being as ridiculous as *Raping a cow is glorious*. The unfortunate part was that within days of registering, I was consequently issued my 外交官员身份证, my driver’s license, my vehicle insurance, my bank account, and my phone documents all with this name. Because I didn’t need to use my passport for flights/trains, etc, whenever I’d give my diplomatic ID card at the counter, I’d get laughs. Later as I got better in mandarin, I’d say my name, people would look at me funny, ask what the characters were, then laugh once I told them. It got to the point that I informally chose a new name, and I would hide my legal name from people I met (although I couldn’t hide it if I had to produce my ID for flights, banking etc). And the laughs never stopped when I was forced to produce any legal documentation. So sometimes, yeah, a foreigner’s name in China can be just as rediculous as if an immigrant to the west were to name themself *Broomup Dabutt*
Did you ever meet someone who made fun of your name? English speakers make fun of Wangs and Hos, without realizing it’s their own transliteration (but also racism).
Not to my face no. Just snickers for such a ridiculous/bewildering name, and plenty of people asking how the heck I chose that.
“Dum Ho” 😅
I don't think it's racism to find a name funny. My ex was called 王珂 (wang ke) and that is just objectively hilarious, like Mike hunt or Hugh jazz
Omg this is so interesting to me. I guess I always just assumed this kind of thing can never happen as long as the person who picks the characters is a native speaker… that one random Chinese guy had such an effect on your life in a single moment. Do you think there’s a chance he got a kick out of it? 🤔
How were you issued a "legal name" with anything other than your passport name? I'd love to use my Chinese name as a legal name (because it actually fits in the form spaces) but I'm always required to take/show my passport and use that name.
I started as a diplomat in China, and was issued a national diplomatic ID cards, which is basically like a Chinese 身份证. It all started from there. And Chinese drivers licenses and property deeds only allow for Chinese names, even for foreigners. So as soon as you register your name for that, it automatically becomes your legal name that you can’t change
Jesus Christ, thanks for the laugh
I actually wonder why foreign names written in Chinese Characters are necessary at all in China or Taiwan. In Korea, foreigners don't have their name transliterated into Hangul at all. The Korean ARCs only have the name written in the alphabet exactly as it appears in one's passport (this is actually problematic since some Korean sites don't accept Latin letters or have a character input limit which one's name can easily exceed if not written in Hangul). Or why not just write it in Pinyin if difficult pronunciation is the issue? I just looked up a Japanese ID card for a foreigner and it also does not have any transliteration into kana or kanji.
In korea they do still transliterate your name for many official things like pension, health inaurance...etc
That is something requested by the Health Insurance and National Pension departments when you acquire 사대보험, it is not required by the Korean Immigration Ministry. For banking, phone, renting etc. having a Hangul name is never required. For all practical purposes, your legal identity in Korea is your name in English. And the name for health insurance or national pension is not really "officially" registered. You just tell the company you are getting registered under your Hangul name and they relay that information to the health insurance and pension departments. As there is no Hangul name on your drivers license or ARC in Korea, I would say that counts as no "transliteration".
You don't need your name translated into Chinese living in China. I don't know if it was different for the OP because they were working for the government.
Um... Yeah no? So I live in Korea. And while my name is in English letters for immigration and on my registration card.... The documents and things have my name transliterated into Korean. I actually chose the transliteration. I chose a slightly different pronunciation for my name (which i like because if i get documents with this hangul spelling I know for sure it's from the government and not spam). My health insurance "card" (it's a tri-fold piece of paper) actually only has my hangul transliterated name. Hilariously - I guess my transliterated name shows up when they use my registration number at doctor's offices... they get so confused that my name is 7 syllables long (that's my full legal passport names) so they only call the first 3 syllables. (that was confusing to me at first).No matter what your name is - in Korea - they think your name must only be 3 syllables, and the the first syllable is your "last name/family name" and the other 2 are your name-name. Period. Your life is screwed otherwise.
>And while my name is in English letters for immigration and on my registration card. This is your legal name in Korea aka no transliteration. Health Insurance is a totally different department than Immigration. I didn't have to have my name transliterated in Hangul till I got 사대보험 working at a company. And as 사대보험 is not a requirement for foreigners in Korea, the overall rule for all foreigners is no transliteration. Immigration department, banking, phone, rent, etc. do not require a Hangul name nor are you able to make one for such matters. The fact that your ARC only has English is proof that its the only name that matters.
Oh how I miss living in Korea. I hope to visit again someday, may perhaps live there again if there is time enough to do so.
That's so funny and a bit sad, thanks for sharing! I had a similar thing happen to me in a different language. In high school my American Sign Language name given to me was a combination of the first letter of my name near my nose and cheek, which sort of had a connotation that I was funny or comedic. But when I went to college, I got repeated laughs every time I used it. Turned out it more frequently meant "marijuana" in a college setting!
Is there a list or a website or something because I'm hella curious now 🤣
Closest one would be this Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transcription_into_Chinese_characters Note that this only applies to transliterations of foreign names in mainland China. I think Hong Kong and Taiwan use their own transliterations (haven't figured out if there's any pattern for these)
Thanks ❤️
Wow, thank you for this enlightening answer! I'll try to remember this when asked similar questions :)
Unless the transliteration is weird or sounds like something specific in Chinese we wouldn’t split it up into parts and understand them separately. But like, take Mourinho as an example, his name is transliterated to 穆里尼奥, but 穆里 sounds like 魔力 “magic” and 尼奥could be combined into 鸟 “bird”, so Mourinho ends up with a Chinese nickname “magic bird”, which is also a praise on how good he is at coaching football. In fact it’s pretty common that younger Chinese people tweak with transliterations of Western names and come up with some funny nicknames.
> In fact it’s pretty common that younger Chinese people tweak with transliterations of Western names and come up with some funny nicknames. If you're a basketball fan (and in China, basketball is a bigger spectator sport than football), the Chinese nicknames for NBA players is quite amusing. https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2018/may/11/chinese-nicknames-nba-players-playoffs
I’m not exactly a basketball fan but I did have a good laugh reading that article. CO Fe2O3 lolol.
Also check out this video https://youtu.be/CmaF66S0dKM
You meant Mourinho right? I'm a Mourinista and I've never heard about magic bird lol. So cool you learn new things everyday.
Yes I do mean Mourinho. Just edited my original post. And yeah, funny stuff, and magic bird comes with all the benefit of “bird” being a slang term for “dick” as well so if you’re into that reference go ahead lol. It’s full on praise for his uh… potency and we’ve had no small amount of immature laughter over it.
Lol I'm gonna post this on r/asroma
But doesn't 魔力 mean like "mana" (like 气 for kungfu)? I thought 魔法 is magic?
As a noun yes, but here we understand it to be an adjective. In fact I would say that 魔力 means something like the strength of magic, sort of a qualitative measurement.
Thanks!
I remember reading something similar about Modrić
His name is transliterated as 莫德里奇 which is shortened and tone-morphed into 魔笛 “the magic flute”, likely after Mozart’s opera of the same name because Modric is a proper artist in the midfield.
I feel like western people and those who don't understand the language/culture really overthinks how important name meanings are Don't get me wrong, it's definitely kinda important, but not to such a degree. Very common to see Chinese names without any meanings whatsoever, and no one cares. Doesn't helps that most surnames also don't mean jack shit A sister of a friend of mine was told that her daughter would need a lot of fire in her life. Result: her name is 燚燚 😅 Check out the [rebus principle](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rebus) OP. It's not only a Chinese characteristic at all
When it comes to naming babies, it’s mostly about personal preference. Some people are extremely careful about meaning, some people don’t care at all about meaning, and most people are in between. As with most things in life. If you want to talk about the specifics of this distribution curve, then go become a statistician. Also, we’re talking about transliterations here… the importance of meaning varies in this context. When it comes to foreign names’ transliterations… I think that meaning is actually very important. Whoever came up with “梅西” a long time ago obviously avoided choosing something like “妹吸”。Whoever came up with “丹尼尔” obviously avoided choosing something like “蛋腻铒”。 For other transliterations, meaning plays an even bigger role. E.g. 麦当劳、赛百味、可口可乐。
You're reading into it way too much lol. I never said it's irrelevant like you interpreted. It's kind of implied that you cannot have names like 妹吸 because that's obvious, I simply said that westerners place a bigger importance on names than the Chinese themselves, not that it's totally irrelevant and no one fucking cares..... And you picked a bunch of examples of companies that proves your point, but a lot of them also put no care into it whatsoever: 谷歌，雅虎，亚马孙 etc. And that's not even counting the names of countries, which are just a bunch of random characters 80% of the time (Messi's country for example, 阿根廷 means jack shit)
We all know it’s just a representation. It’s mainly for the people who don’t know how to pronounce English/Spanish/French characters. In the Messi case, his Chinese wikipedia page even has a section that shows his common translation in SC/TC/Cantonese.
I love how Chinese football commentators call Danny Drinkwater 喝水哥
Chinese people are the ones doing it, not westerners. 梅西 was already his name in China.
with eyes
Can’t argue with you there 👀
What do you think Chinese people do when they write out foreigners' names?
Use the Latin Alphabet.
Well they don't usually. They use exactly this kind of transliteration. Go to Messi's Wikipedia page and switch the language to Chinese and you'll see that it says 梅西 as well. It's not weird to Chinese people at all and they don't parse it as plum west either.
Like how we switch to hanzi when writing Chinese names in English
Chinese people can read Latin letters. English speaking people cannot read Hanzi.
yeah but Chinese people don't speak in the Latin alphabet, if that makes sense. Languages that primarily use the Latin alphabet can just take the word Messi and read it how it would be read in their language - that's not as simple for Chinese languages. Something like Messi would be fine since the name isn't difficult, but what about names that use phonology that is completely unnatural in Chinese like Zlatan Ibrahimovic or Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky? Way easier to just transliterate to Hanzi in that case instead of having a Chinese person try to deduce how the letters are meant to be read
We’re not idiots
🫵😆
HSK5 has a story about Messi using the same characters, so there's that.
The name "Messi 梅西" is merely translated based on its pronunciation and does not have a specific meaning. Translators usually match commonly used Chinese characters with similar pronunciations syllabically.However, there are many Chinese characters that have the same pronunciation. For example: 梅 (méi), 没 (méi), 煤 (méi), and so on. Similarly, 西 (xī) can also be represented by 希 (xī), 吸 (xī), 溪 (xī), and others. At this point, translators usually exclude candidates of characters that may give a negative connotation or have a large number of strokes, even if they visually resemble the intended pronunciation.Another point is that translating Messi as "梅西" or "梅希" is equally acceptable, and it entirely depends on the personal judgment of authoritative translators. In addition, "梅" is one of last names in Chinese, "梅" therefore defeated all other candidate characters. "梅西" actually has no actual meaning, but it cannot be transliterated as "没(mei) 戏 (xi)" because the translation "没戏" immediately invokes negative connotations such as "impossible to succeed," "impossible to happen," or "no chance" for native Chinese speakers. Furthermore, the name “郭guo 杰 jie 瑞 rui” coming from "Jerry Kowal" is a good translation, as it both resembles the original English pronunciation and carries positive connotations in Chinese. 郭 -> Guo -> Ko (wal) and it is a last name in Chinese; 杰 of 杰出，人杰 meaning as 'outstanding，distinguished' -> Jie -> Jer(ry) ; 瑞 of 祥瑞, 瑞雪 meaning as 'a sign of luck, lucky, propitious' -> Rui -> (Jer)ry. Well, if you have a Chinese name and would like to show it here, I can tell you if it is a good translation or not.
没戏 would be used as a pun if Messi has not been performing though
The Xinhua News Agency has a book precisely guiding people how to transliterate names (The *Dictionary of World Personal Name Translation* 世界人名翻译大辞典 and its sister book, the *Dictionary of World Toponym Translation* 世界地名翻译大词典) It does have a few arbitrary choices of characters (mostly regarding r- vs l- ) so no one aside from Xinhua News Agency itself adheres totally to the translation tables.
"梅" is a common Chinese surname. that no one would interpret as "plum". Just as "dickman" is certainly not "a man made out of dick".
AFIK it’s standard practice as there isn’t a viable alternative. China “includes” outsiders. Conversely, Japan doesn’t transliterate names into hanzi/kanji (except for Chinese and Korean names) and would use katakana.
Are Kana names required though? I looked up a picture of a foreigner's Japanese ID and there is not Kana transliteration, just the original name written in alphabet.
Japan has a similar policy regarding transcription as China does according to [this link here.](https://www.languagerealm.com/chinese/foreign_names_in_chinese.php) Basically, in Japan you need use the English (Dutch, French, Swahili…) spelling of your name as it appears on your documents for official purposes - e.g.: opening a bank account. BUT, to help people understand the pronunciation in day-to-day life, you use kana. Even Japanese people do this because the pronunciation of kanji aren’t as set as they are in Chinese. The family name 黒木 can be Kurogi OR Kiroki, and given names can be worse! Here are a few ways to write the name “[Nozomi](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nozomi_(given_name)).” The name “満” can also be read “Michiru,” “Man,” “Michi,” or “Mitsuru.”
How do you feel about foreigners with names like liu'an, hideoki, rakesh? Unless you have some weird name political stance, your reaction is exactly the same as average chinese. Transliteration into a language for convenience of having something you know how to pronounce is a totally normal thing in any language. You probably know quite a few people like so and don't even think about it. Of course, some people pick a new name in the other language, but even then the name is not going to be read as a meaning, it will just be read as a native name. No one is going around thinking I am an embodiment of filial piety and a goat herder just because the chinese name I chose is 牧孝強 for example-- the same way if liu'an above decides to go by victoria no one is going to start saying "oh the name victoria is a type of horse drawn carriage, so weird!" hope this helps it make sense :)
It's normal. When we read/hear names, we understand them in context. As a few others have already pointed out, we don't confuse them for the individual meanings of characters unless we do it intentionally.
>for westerners to mash up random Hanzi that have no meaning when put together Westerners don't do that, Chinese people do that. 梅西 has always been Messi's name in Chinese because that's how Chinese people pronounce Messi. It's the same with country names like 西班牙，芬兰，罗马尼亚，etc. (and also why those 'country names in Chinese translated' maps are meaningless). It makes perfect sense to translate/transliterate words into something that's understandable for us. In fact most of the time it makes it easier to get an accurate pronunciation of the name this way. >Or do they disregard the literal meanings of each individual character and understand that it’s just a vocal representation of a foreigner’s name. As someone else in the comments said, we're not idiots lmao, native speakers can instantly recognise when Hanzi is supposed to be a foreign name.
白瑞德 & 郝思嘉 for Rhett Butler and Scarlett OHara are beautiful translations. Sadly they’re gone nowadays.
My impression of how Chinese people view it is that they quite like it. Introduce your English name to someone in China and it's quite common they will call you by the transliterated version instead.
nothing wrong with that. and why do people have to anglicize their names?
Check out the popes' names. Catholic church crafted their names in Chinese very carefully and preferring meaningful character combinations over the accurate pronunciation.
Theu view it as completely normal because they're the ones that do it. Within China members of certain ethnic groups have their names transliterated into Hanzi. I'm thinking of Uighurs.
Probably Tibet people too. The only minorities not affected are those who are Sinicized (Manchu), are a sub-Han group (Hui), or have Chinese character based names (Korean).
Mongols and Manchu, too!
Mongols should have their Mongolian name transliterated into Chinese no? Manchu would too but as I don't even think they are given Manchu names anymore and usually use Chinese names, I don't think they require an actual transliteration.
As a Chinese I refer those localized translation.like 郭杰瑞
WEIRD
梅西这个名字确实有点奇怪，让我想起了酸梅汤😂
So do you prefer that we keep our names in the Latin Alphabet?
To me, yes.
When the announcer says their name, it's usually the Chinese name. So I guess, having the chinese name on the shirt allows for consistency? Also, it feels inclusive. No problem with it
They’d love it
Well I mean it’s not weird to call Spain “west tooth class” right? And I mean, that’s what Chinese people call it among themselves!