Fans of Chinese and Mandarin
Well, in the Chinese culture, we have a term generational name, or 字辈 in Chinese, which could be seen in some Chinese people’s names. And the notion full name in the Chinese culture could refer to a name comprised of a surname, a generational name and a given name, or a name comprised of a … Read more
Well, I will mention an example, 天不言自高, 地不言自厚, which literally means the sky doesn’t say how high it is and the ground doesn’t say how deep it is. It’s usually used to remind people of keeping a humble attitude, rather than adopting a complacent one. I mean, when you see the high sky and deep … Read more
There are tons but I know some… [I know that I’m missing some more but these are what I currently know on the top of my head.] I understand that and the character’s meme: Just search “姦 meme” and you’ll know. Also, 轟 if you search-image “轟”, you’ll get the My Hero Academia character since … Read more
LOL, no. If you’re going for “lucky butterfly,” 吉蝴 is the worst you could go with. It’s a weird name because 蝴 isn’t a common word used for names. 吉蝶 isn’t much better. 蝴 and 蝶 aren’t very common for names. 蝶 was particularly bad for the girls’ name because, in Chinese culture, butterflies often … Read more
Well, it depends on how you see this topic. I mean, the sentence structure of the Chinese language is usually SVO, which is subject–verb–object, or 主谓宾 in Chinese. And the word order in spoken Chinese also follows this. Of course, there are Chinese phrases and Chinese sentences whose positions of verbs and objects are reversed. … Read more
Two theories about the meaning of 海参崴* Hǎishēnwǎi / Haeshenwae 1: Perhaps a translation of a Manchu name that means “seaside village”: ᡥᠠᡳ᠌ᡧᡝᠨᠸᡝᡳ 2: Perhaps 崴 is a local word used to form names of bays. 海参 hǎishēn / haeshen is a Mandarin word for “sea cucumber”, so 海参崴 could mean “Sea Cucumber Bay” or … Read more
The name that you mentioned in the question, Mixin, or 蜜心 in Chinese, literally means honey heart. Since honey tastes sweet, this Chinese character could also be used as an adjective to mean sweet. Thus, 蜜心 could mean sweetheart. In my humble opinion, it’s not a bad name for a female. However, it could make … Read more
First, 倫 lún：this is a combination of 人 person and 侖 which is 亼 chí / ji gathering 冊 books (for those who care: 形聲必兼會意）; the basic idea is thinking, and sorting into categories, specifically age groups. So the 倫 refers to the relations within the family, first and above all: between spouses, between parents … Read more
Originally all words had one pronunciation each (一個蘿蔔一個坑 each radish has its hole, couldn’t resist that), but as the language evolved, characters took on different pronunciations for the sake of clarity. Or perhaps we should say, since the written language follows the spoken language, as language evolved, people started pronouncing words a bit different for … Read more
One of the challenges I faced learning Chinese was the way Chinese expresses things so much differently from English, my native language. An example is 不好意思 which means shy. But say I’m walking up the escalator in the Taipei MRT and somebody is standing on the left; the custom is to stand on the right. … Read more