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Translating your child's name

... How to use a dictionary (such as the online one linked below) to find the meaning
of each character of your child's name.

A child's name may be looked up--the meaning of the characters--if the parent has the actual characters to refer to. Any of the child's Chinese documents would show the child's name in Chinese characters, pinyin, or both. Go to a dictionary website (see below) and type the pinyin (which would be Mandarin), then find your child's character(s) in the resulting list of characters fitting that pinyin spelling. Read the corresponding meaning. In using pinyin, keep in mind that the pinyin "word" is just a phonetic rendering of the sound in Mandarin and that, as the examples below with 'mei' illustrate, more than one Chinese word--and sometimes many--may fit a given sound. 'Ming', for example (with one or another tone) is the spoken form of about 7 words, about 4 of which are commonly used in names. 'Mei' is, in one tone or another, the spoken sound for about 18 different words, about 5 of which are commonly used in names. Another important point about given names is that, as with many instances of pairing individual words in Chinese (or in another language), the combination often has a meaning not apparent from the literal meanings of the parts. To find the meaning of some compounds, a printed dictionary is needed, since online dictionaries do not give meanings of compounds. (See the review of dictionaries, Dictionaries: English to Chinese and Chinese to English.) Here are two online Chinese-English, English-Chinese dictionaries (and more). Looking for the meaning, character, or pinyin (even Cantonese)? Type a word in Mandarin (using pinyin) (even without knowing the tone), English or Cantonese (using yale) and get the range of possibilities: http://www.mandarintools.com/chardict.html http://www.yourdictionary.com/languages/sinotibe.html

Some examples with Mei When 'Mei' is part of a person's name, it is most likely to be one of the following five words written in pinyin as "mei" (sounds like may). There are another dozen or so "mei" words, but they are less likely to occur in names. If your child's documents give "Mei" as part of her name, you would type 'mei' into the online dictionary and, in the resulting list of characters, find the one which matches the character on your daughter's documents and read the translation for that character. The back of your child's referral photo, that is one good place to find her name in characters, but it should not be hard to decide which characters are the name. When you type the pinyin name into the dictionary's search slot, you do not need to specify the tone. Remember that the dictionary will give you all the 'mei' words, not just those used in names. Character pinyin (Mandarin)  Definition   (mei2) features, looks (mei2) rose   (mei2) plum (mei3) beautiful, pretty, good, very satisfactory   (mei4) charming, enchanting Note: it is seen above that a few of these names have the same spoken form--mei2. Likewise, there are other words spoken as mei 2, mei3 and mei4, whether in names or not, so the importance of knowing the character becomes apparent. See the "Tones ..." article noted below for more on this.

See the related articles: Tones: the Four Inflections in Spoken Chinese , a brief introduction Dictionaries: English to Chinese and Chinese to English, a review with examples

NEW -- Chinese characters of your child's name or for other words. High resolutiom and editable in your computer for print, graphics, webpage, etc. See details ....

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