A Chinese name can quietly depend on the hour you were born. Here is why the two-hour slot matters, and what to do when nobody knows your time.
A Chinese name can quietly depend on the hour you were born. Here is why the two-hour slot matters, and what to do when nobody knows your time.
"Your name is so beautiful" sounds like approval. Chinese hosts say it to almost every guest, and what happens next tells you what they think.
A Chinese surname travels with a hometown, a rank and a village history. What a native speaker hears, and what a chosen surname can buy.
Before a Chinese name reaches the registry, families strike characters out. What gets cut, who decides, and what to do if yours is next.
"Last name" and "first name" boxes take a Chinese name apart in the wrong order. Here is what a Chinese reader sees in the result, and how to fix it.
A hostess hears your surname, walks four people to a table for one, then comes back. What the reservation desk hears, and how to fix it.
A name that works in Beijing can fail at a grandmother's table. Here are three elder tests, five risky characters, and one comparison table.
A Chinese name called over a clinic or gate loudspeaker is compressed, toneless, and gone in two seconds. Here is why you freeze, and how to fix it.
Print a Chinese name without its tone marks and the Latin string becomes a different name. Here is what the diacritics carry, and how to keep them.
Chinese names were written in vertical columns long before they were written on one line. Get the column order wrong and your name stops being a name.
Writing a Chinese character for a novel or game? Learn the naming traps that make readers hear a costume instead of a person, and how to fix them.
Your Chinese name survives the resume and dies in the inbox. Surname order, salutation, and sign-off rules that keep a professional name intact.