Chinese Names

We have over 6,000 names on the Chinese Name list. If you have a popular name, it should be already on the list. Simplified or traditional characters? All the names listed here are in the simplified form used in China. For more info about this, check out the page here. Can I put a Chinese name vertically? Yes, you can. See the Chinese name for Angel as an example below. Just have the leftmost character on the top. How many Chinese characters? There are over 80,000 Chinese characters, but most of them are seldom used today. So how many Chinese characters do you need to know? For basic reading and writing of modern Chinese, you only need a few thousands. Here are the coverage rates of the most frequently used Chinese characters: Most frequently used 1,000 characters: ~90% (Coverage rate) Most frequently used 2,500 characters: 98.0% (Coverage rate) Most frequently used 3,500 characters: 99.5% (Coverage rate) If two names have the same pronunciation, do they have the same Chinese name? Yes, they will be the same in general. For example, Kelly and Kelli have the same Chinese name. Therefore, if you don't see your name on the list, but find one with the same pronunciation, you can just use it for your name. This is not saying we can't make the translations slightly different. In fact, we did differentiate them in a few cases even they have the same pronunciation. How accurate are the translations? There is no standard for the translation so we will try to get the name translation as close as possible and also to use more meaningful characters. It is quite possible that you may see different translations from different places. The difference is some are good, some are bad, or some are better. Can I get the Chinese characters from a pinyin name? No. Usually a pinyin corresponds to many Chinese characters. For example, ming (a pinyin) can represent the Chinese characters for bright, famous, inscription, etc. Thus it will be hard to guess the right Chinese character from a pinyin. So please don't send me pinyin names for translations. For more info about pinyin, click here. Is the name for Cantonese or Mandarin? Chinese characters (or Hanzi) are the same for different Chinese dialects, though there are some particular characters used in some dialects. Thus the names are the same in both Cantonese and Mandarin. Can I submit a name to be added to the list? Yes, please use the Submit A Name form. The name will be added to the list in about two weeks. Japanese Kanji or Chinese characters? Japanese Kanji are originally from China so most of them are the same as their corresponding Chinese characters, but Japanese kanji only contain a small collection of Chinese characters. There are a lot more Chinese characters not included in Japanese Kanji. Actually kanji mean Chinese characters. Kanji are used less and less now in Japan. You don't see a lot of Kanji in a modern Japanese book anymore. If you need more info about Kanji, check out our Japanese Language site.