4 ms·

In case if here is somebody Chinese, I wanted to ask: is it even possible to distinguish given name from family name by glance? Like, in the example of "Fred Ya

by krick 2y ago

In case if here is somebody Chinese, I wanted to ask: is it even possible to distinguish given name from family name by glance? Like, in the example of "Fred Yao Ming" or "Fred Ming Yao". I mean, if you know Russian, you are pretty much always sure which one is the name, and which one is surname. In theory, it can be whatever, but it almost never really happens. There is a bit more ambiguity in English (Scott Alexander or even having Jackson as the given name), but still I'd say in the majority of cases you know names from surnames. Is there some common knowledge in Chinese that Ming is a common family name and Yao is a common given name, and the reverse would be unusual? Or can it be anything, and there's no way to know? I am wondering this about all asian languages, where names tend to be so short, so it also applies to Korean, Vietnamese, etc.

adelie 2y ago
generally speaking for han chinese folks, surnames are one character and given names are one or two characters (with two being more common, usually). so if you see a name that's 1-2 or 2-1 (i.e. liu yifei) and it's not one of the few known multi-character surnames, then you can safely assume that's their given name. for a 1-1 name like yao ming, it's a little more difficult. some characters are definitely more common as surnames than others - the chinese term for 'common people' (百姓) actually refers to an old classic text where they compiled all the surnames they knew of! so when i see the name yao ming, i immediately recognize that 'yao' is a fairly common surname and 'ming' is not, and thus it's more likely (but not guaranteed!) that 'yao' is the surname here. there's also some cases that are ambiguous when romanized, but not ambiguous in chinese. for example, consider the name 'wang chen,' where both 'wang' and 'chen' are common chinese surnames. however, if i saw it written out as 王, i would be able to recognize that 王 'wang' is a character that's primarily used for surnames, while 晨 'chen' is not.

by krick 2y ago

adelie 2y ago

generally speaking for han chinese folks, surnames are one character and given names are one or two characters (with two being more common, usually). so if you see a name that's 1-2 or 2-1 (i.e. liu yifei) and it's not one of the few known multi-character surnames, then you can safely assume that's their given name. for a 1-1 name like yao ming, it's a little more difficult. some characters are definitely more common as surnames than others - the chinese term for 'common people' (百姓) actually refers to an old classic text where they compiled all the surnames they knew of! so when i see the name yao ming, i immediately recognize that 'yao' is a fairly common surname and 'ming' is not, and thus it's more likely (but not guaranteed!) that 'yao' is the surname here. there's also some cases that are ambiguous when romanized, but not ambiguous in chinese. for example, consider the name 'wang chen,' where both 'wang' and 'chen' are common chinese surnames. however, if i saw it written out as 王, i would be able to recognize that 王 'wang' is a character that's primarily used for surnames, while 晨 'chen' is not.