'Hi officer, my name is Awesome!'—Hilarious Chinese names American choose

With the popularity of learning Chinese worldwide nowadays, more and more Americans are fond of finding unique and attractive Chinese names for themselves. Don’t lie to you, most American people I knew give themselves fairly off-the-wall Chinese names, and worse yet, they are extraordinarily proud of those names.

Hilarious Chinese names American choose

• An American guy who has lived in China for several years and got his Chinese driver license (which is even difficult to get for Chinese people) chose a Chinese name ‘好厉害’ for himself. ‘好厉害’ (hao li hai) means awesome, amazing or wonderful in English. It is truly ‘Awesome’ for an American to obtain a Chinese driver license, but it is so uncommon to choose such a name in both America and China (and on the earth).

• My friend Andrew got a Chinese name ‘安卓’, which means ‘Android’, since the Chinese pronunciation of 安卓 (an zhuo)  is very similar to English pronunciation of Andrew.
• We gave our American boss Adam Power a Chinese name ‘安灯泡’, which means installing light bulbs in Chinese. And we told him it was a royal name which can be only used by upper class people. And he believed us…

• Our former language instructor called himself 王老吉, which is a popular beverage brand in China like Coke. We all suspected he got the commission from that beverage company!
• Jeff—姐夫(jie fu) which means brother-in-law, just be sure these two words have a similar pronunciation. I wonder what Jeff’s father-in-law will call him—it is very likely for Jeff to lose his finance, is it?

3 tips for finding a perfect Chinese name

• Don’t transliterate your name.

The most common mistake when choosing a Chinese name is to pick a direct transliteration of you name. This might work for celebrities like Kobe (科比), but it doesn’t work for everyone, like Andrew-安卓and Jeff-姐夫, which are typical examples.  

• Look to Chinese literary tradition.

A lot of Chinese parents choose names for their kids by using the characters from Chinese poems or literature. You could also find a poetic name in this way. Don’t forget to make sure it has a good meaning by looking it up in the dictionary, or asking a native speaker to check it for you.

• Ask for help!

Finding a name that both sounds good and matches your personality isn’t easy. Ask native speakers for suggestions and opinions! They will take connotations, emotions and culture into account, which is the best and fastest way for getting a suitable Chinese name.

Here I’d like to recommend a free naming service from a professional Chinese translation company—Beacon Translation. Although they do not list this service in their web, but one of my friends working there told me they have helped many Americans choose their Chinese names.

What’s your Chinese name and the story behind it? Are you happy with your Chinese name? Do you want to get a suitable Chinese name? please leave a comment!