Chinese/English Baby Boy

[SnowGreen]

He's so lovely. He really needs a lovely name

He's half Chinese/half English.

Any ideas? He'll be brought up in England. However, we will spend school holidays, etc. in China, so needs to work out there.

Thank you...

[Mottled]

There are a few Chinese children at DCs school and all have two names, one 'English' and one Chinese. Not sure that I know of any mixed race children with just the one name so I am looking forward to seeing the results of this thread.

[WyfOfBathe]

The only names I can think of that work in both are Lǐ/Lee. Could maybe make a tenuous link between Yǒu and Joe.

Like Mottled said, most of the Chinese children I know have separate Chinese and English names; often the Chinese name is officially their middle name.

Or, I don't know if this is a "normal" thing, but you could use the meaning of an English name to find a Chinese name, e.g. Max means great, so you could give a Chinese name containing 伟 Wei. This doesn't work with every English name though - Jake means "he grasps the heel" and Joseph means "may Jehovah increase" (but my Chinese isn't very good, so you might still find a way to make it work )

[BobbyGentry]

Cantonese or Mandarin speaking?

Agree with the above posters when they write that a separate name's needed as transliterations tend not to sound right in either languages.

A cute double sounding nickname seems popular in China though...

Do Do
Ge Ge (big brother)
Mei Mei (little sister)

Let a Chinese native speaker pick otherwise you could inadvertently pick a swear word such as bun bun (Wally.)

[CaoNiMerrilyOnHigh]

Jun
Lee/Li
Kai
Shen
Dan

[ClaudiaWankleman]

I think the separate names thing is the best way to go. Maybe keep the first consonant of each name the same for continuity?

As for Chinese names, I prefer two syllable names rather than three. What's the Chinese surname? I am especially fond of repeated sounds e.g. Lian lian, Li li, Cheng cheng etc.

I also love the repeated radical characters for names (燚，磊 or 淼) although I am aware it's very eighties!