Today's game--Hanzi madness!

[muckefuck]

Alright, for us cubicle drones, it's the first day back after an extended Thanksgiving vacation. We're sitting in front of our screens whining, What am I doing here? and wishing for a reprise of the quiet oblivion of last week. Speaking of last week, remember the hubbub about the wacky meanings of transliterated words in Chinese? Remember how cool it was that welcomerain got to do her name and how you wished you could do the same?

I can't believe I didn't remember this earlier, but zhongwen.com--which is an excellent site for learning about written Chinese--has a short list of transliterated Western names. Since every character on the site is hyperlinked to a dictionary entry, you can look up the meanings without going through the arduous process of learning how to use a Chinese dictionary.

The link to the canned transliterations is under the heading Vocabulary. If you don't like the one given for your name--or if your name isn't listed--build your own! Go to Search Dictionary and click the Pronunciation link. Clicking on one of the Pinyin syllables will take you to a list of selected characters. (The Zhongwen.com site can only list a fraction of the total number of Chinese characters in existence, but it's still enough to provide hundreds of possibilities for most names.) If you're not sure how your name would be written in Pinyin, try to follow the models given under English Names or just ask me.

For instance, here's how we found bunji's name many years ago: Pinyin e is generally similar in sound to the English shwa, so Benji is a fair match for "Bunji". We went through possible characters before finally settling on ben3 "base, origin" (as in Ri4ben3 "Japan") and ji2 "good luck".

Other examples:

• Kenneth--Ken3ni2shi4 "Consent Nun Gentleman"
• Sheila--Not given. One could use the transcriptions for Julia or Julie, which are etymologically the same name. The closest sound match would be Xila, which has over 650 possible combinations listed.
• William--Wei1lian2 "Awe Corner". (Of course, I prefer to use the "translation" Zhi1guan4 "Will Headgear", i.e. "Will-helm".)
• Virginia--Not given. Since this would be awkward to transcribe (the transcription of the state's name has four characters, Wei2ji2ni2ya4 "Unite Luck Nun Asia"), we can also "translate" it to Chu3nü3wang2 "virgin queen".

Comments

[mollpeartree.livejournal.com]

The closest sound match would be Xila, which has over 650 possible combinations listed.

Way to make a girl feel vague!

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

You've always struck me as a woman with a strong sense of herself. Is that self-image closer to "Evening Meat sacrifice", "Western Wax", or "Happy Slitting"?

Actually, now that I think of it, Xile would work, too, and that narrows the filed down to about 240 combos. Better?

[mollpeartree.livejournal.com]

"Evening Meat Sacrifice" is me all over. Thanks!

[princeofcairo.livejournal.com]

You'll always be "Happy Slitting" to me, sweetheart.

[teapot-farm.livejournal.com]

Hm. The nearest full-name translation I could find came out as 'incestuous relationship' - though I can be 'good luck' if I shorten it. Or something chicken related.
Oh, do you know if there is any particularly lucky or unlucky Chinese symbolism attached to mushrooms? Especially hideous cute white chocolate ones with faces on?

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

Chickens are bad news in Chinese. The Mandarin equivalent of "dumb as a bag of hammers" is "dumb as a wooden chicken".

I'll have to check Eberhard on mushrooms, but I do know that a lot of Chinese symbolism is based on puns (e.g. the red bats one always sees, since "bat" is a homophone for "good luck"). The basic word for "mushroom" is homophonous with "sin" and "orphan". Does not sound promising!

[teapot-farm.livejournal.com]

Uh oh. Mind you, she (the recipient of this horrible, horrible gift) really liked last year's ceramic chicken, so I might get away with it.

[snowy-owlet.livejournal.com]

I'm doing the Happy Queen Dance!

[princeofcairo.livejournal.com]

I think I prefer "Agreeable Conservative Gentleman." Same characters, slightly more realistic description.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

Different characters, actually--"mud" rather than "nun". And different pronunciation: In the meaning "conservative", the "mud" character is pronounced ni4 rather than ni2 (that is, falling tone rather than rising).

Or perhaps you could transcribe the original character "Nunn" rather than "nun"?