What is Cantonese for princess?

[Redtartanlass]

dp and I are considering calling our dd1 princess in Cantonese. My FIL says it is "Mee Lie", is this how you say it, and how do yo spell it?

And honest opinion (diplomatically) what do you think of the name Mee Lie Wong. Or Mee Li my surname

It's either that or Bonnie

Anybody???

r u cantonese? or is ur dh?

I'm not sure how to pronounce what u wrote...is it phonetic? so would be "me lie" or is it pronounced differently?

I think thats gorgeous.

It sounds lovely.

My fil is and he says it's phonetically 'me lie' but I need to check the spelling and if that is correct phonetically. IYSWIM

I dont speak Cantonese, but Mandarin. Meili is 'beautiful' in Mandarin, likely to be similar in Cantonese? Princess in Mandarin is Gongzhu I think.
You could try asking on the Chinese mothers thread in multiculturalfamilies, there are some Cantonese speakers there.

I guess my reservation would be that it might seem a strange name if you lived in a Chinese speaking country, but Meili does sound pretty.

btw Our children have English 1st names and Chiese surname (dh is Chinese, I am white British) with a Chinese name as middle name, so they answer to either, but use the English ones at school etc.

Oh thanks a lot soyabean, do you pronounce it 'me lie'.

Can you speak Mandarin?

Sorry of course you can....did it take you long to learn?

Anybody else....

Hi,

Princess in cantonese and mandarin sound alike. In cantonese it sounds more like gong ju, as opposed to gongzhu in mandarin.

I think your FIL was thinking 'Mee Lie' for pretty, not princess. Phonetically it sounds like 'May/Mei Lai/Lie' in Cantonese.

I hope this helps, but I'd prefer May/Mei Lai/Lye to Mee Lie. Too close to 'Me Lie', which could be a little tricky when she uses it at school (I lie, me lie, you lie)

If you need any more help, CAT me

Hi RTL,Baleine
Its a minefield isnt it, thinking of names that work in English and Chinese! We rejected so many nice Chinese names cos they sounded like English words. Our children and their generatuion of the family all have Tai as forst givcen name, but we had toreject Taiping, Tailing, Taiming, and many others cos of how they sounded in English! (We did get many hours of amusement out of it though!)
Yes, I studied Mandarin at University then worked in China and met dh. So both of us speak Mandarin but I'm afraid our children dont much.It has been much harder to teach them than we thought it woudl be. Dd went to a local Chinese school on Sundays for a while, but tbh the teaching was pretty terrible, and it wasnt much fun, also it was a very CAntonese environment, with one Mandarin mixed age class. So it didnt really suit us.\

Now dh tries to do some writing and talking with dd and ds2 on Sunday mornings and ds1 (13) has started having one lesson a week with a freind of his, of hisown volition, so we are REALLY pleasedabout that. (He has also started using the pinyin spelling of his name,interestingly!)
We do speak some Chinese around the house but,for many reasons,it just hasnt been our main home language.

Hi soyabean - how did you decide which dialect to transliterate from? That was our problem - couldn't decide between hokkien, which is what dh is, or mandarin. Went for mandarin in the end since the spelling was nicer.

BTW if you're interested there are some useful online chinese websites which may help: mandarintools.com has a cantonese dictionary as well as mandarin though I find zhongwen.com easier to use.

Y1n
Well we only have the Mandarin option as dh is from SW China where the dialect is a version of Mandarin but doesnt have its own 'pinyin'. Thanks for the links, will check out zhongwen.com

Ds's Chinese teacher has said she can't do it any more so am posting here just on the offchance that anyone knows anyone who'd be interested:

Teaching 2 keen 13 year old boys one hour per week ideally Mon eve, in Camberwell/Peckham S London. We were paying #10 each per lesson. They have done about 6 months, writing and speaking/listening.I have offered to teach them myself (ds is not keen on the idea!) but a non-related teacher wd be much better. And native speaker, with teaching experience is what we wouldreally like...

I think its very pretty

I also think that if your DD is brought up in UK or other english speaking country they are going to get the mick taken out of them at school because me lie sounds like 'I'm not telling the truth '

as someone who has to listen to the same 'joke' over and over on introductions, and think to myself a million and four times I've heard that one whilst smiling nicely, I would think you should think very carefully about it

PS sister's chocolate lab is called Bonnie so I'm not commenting on that one

I think you're right about being teased about Mee Lie, so we're going for Scarlett or Bonnie.

But there seems to be a lot of dogs called Bonnie , poor wee soul, nearly 3 weeks old and has no name!!!

I suspect Scarlett is going to win...but apparantly somone on Eastenders is called that. Not sure as I'm a Corrie girl!!!

God it's just soo hard, it took us 5 weeks to name ds2!!!