question about names?

well, I was wondering, the chinese names go surname, first and middle right?
i don't speak much chinese, so i don't really know, but
like in lavender, sometimes the refer to leung yi xun as leung ah xun, and tong wei shen (i think that's his name) as xiao tong...
i'm confused about this, could anyone tell me what this means?
thanks.

Posted: Wed Jul 04, 2007 6:48 pm Post subject: Post Rating: 0

well the "ah" part of leung ah xun isn't part of the person's actual name, its something added on (kind of like in english where instead of just John you might say Uncle John), its a way to address someone close to you. And for tong wei shen, "xiao" means little, so xiao tong is just a nickname ^_^

Posted: Wed Jul 04, 2007 7:16 pm Post subject: Post Rating: 0

we got a bit chinese at school and the only thing I know (and what our teacher explained us) is that there are just first names & last names, so no middle names (I remember her saying that some last names are very common in china and that there are already problems with that many ppl have the same last name)
and idd, 'xiao' is little, & 'da' is big ^-^ & I know how to write them in chinese yaaaaah cheers

(srry I'm just a bit proud that I can read a bit chinese^^")

Posted: Wed Jul 04, 2007 7:25 pm Post subject: Post Rating: 0

yupyup ^^ the thing is first names can be more than one character, so a name might be something like Zhang Zi Yi but Zi Yi is the first name, just two characters. No middle names in china pinch

Posted: Wed Jul 04, 2007 7:25 pm Post subject: Post Rating: 0

thank you so much Big Smile

I was afraid that I couldn't use them in the asian roleplay I am doing, because I didn't know how to correctly use them!

Posted: Wed Jul 04, 2007 7:26 pm Post subject: Post Rating: 0

I take a chinese course at school, and I've found that family names are generally pretty short, and given names are usually longer and descriptive.

Li Yi Xiao Yue would roughly translate into Li's First Little Moon, Li being the family name and Yi Xiao Yue being the given.

Hopefully, this has helped a little.

Posted: Fri Jul 20, 2007 7:56 pm Post subject: Post Rating: 0

Chinese names (most common ones) consist of 3 characters, with the family/last name as the first character, and the next 2 characters as the given name. Of course, there are exceptions. (There are some Chinese people that have 2 characters as their family name, and, therefore, their Chinese name may have 4 or 3 characters) And there are also some Chinese people that just have 2 characters as their given name. The most common is 3 characters for a name though. Some examples:

Mike He (TWdrama actor) - He (family name) Jun Xiang (given name) [3 characters]
Charles Czeto (HKdrama actor) - Si Tu (family name) Shui Ki (given name) [4 characters - he has a 2 character last name]

Hope it helps!