Even though I, myself is Chinese, the way Chinese names are made have always bugged me. I got my information from wikipedia and such but I can not get the middle character in the name (which they call the generation name). I have no idea how they get it as my brother also tried to clarify, saying it is shared by entire generation of the family but my father's one is different than one of my uncle's one and that left me stumped. Where do they come up with the middle character? Also, how are nicknames made? I only know of the addition of 小 character in front of the given name and 字 (or was it the character without the roof thing on top) added behind the given name. If one knows about how it works, please feel free to share.

Only some families do the generation thing. And (I read wikipedia too) some ancestor some time ago decided to write a poem and have all of his descendants follow it for the generation names. So, for example, the first generation's middle character would be the first word in the poem, and the next one the second, and so on and so forth.

I have no real idea, except names are formated last name then a two character first name ( in rare cases, one character: ex. Last Name: Silver, First Name: Star) Your parents or relatives make up your name and if you have bad luck you could end up being named literally : ( insert last name) Dog Crap.

I think the whole generation name thing is a matter of preference and not everyone does it. My parents didn't. To me it's like having parents that name their kids with the same beginning letter. Boys: Bob, Billy, Bo Girls: Jenny, Jill, Jo

As for nicknames it could be a shorten version of the name, shorten name with a suffix or if you look like something...(shorty, fatty)

Last edited by Nelo_Neko at 11:02 pm, Aug 15 2007

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Me too, I myself am chinese too and my name stands out too much. Its weng chi fa. Chi as in everyone. and fa and in gun hai fa chai. or the thing you say at chinese new years. So my names basically means for everyone to prosper. If other people read my name. I worry about being looked downed on cause of my strange name.

So the generation name came from a poem... seems absurd to me but...ah, tradition is tradition.



Really, you should not be so ashamed of your own name, its nice. My name is lei wen chao. lei as in lightning, wen as zhong wen or ying wen, and chao as in super or surpassing in some translations (the same one you see in "super"market). I don't know the meaning of it though.