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Hello! I grew up in Taiwan and my first language was Mandarin, so I believe that I have something to contribute. That being said, I moved to the States when I was nine, so my Chinese isn't as great as it should be. Still, though, I thought I should respond. My Chinese given name is actually only one character long. It's 元 (Yuán) which literally means money. You might have heard it used to refer to Chinese or Taiwanese currency. I wish I could give you some more names, but I feel like it wouldn't be right to just tell the internet all my friends' names. If you want to name a character who's a child, you could just add Xiao to the front of the name. It means little, and it sounds cute no matter what it's attached to. But it's probably not a good idea to name your kid Xiao something, 'cause they'll probably be ridiculed by any Chinese speakers they meet. So yeah, do what you want with that. Now, that being said, I'm kind of against the idea of westerners using Chinese names in general. My rule is "if you can't pronounce it, don't use it" and most foreigners can't pronounce Chinese names right. I mean, I'm not blaming you guys, Mandarin and Cantonese and the other dialects are pretty hard to learn if your native language is English, but if you really can't say it right, then don't use the effing name! Plus, if you don't know the language too well, the name could end up sounding ridiculous to someone who actually speaks the language. I saw a thread a few weeks back that mentioned the name "Xiao Xue", and I can tell you, if an adult told me that their name was that, I would be trying really hard not to laugh. It doesn't mean anything inappropriate, but it just sounds like a nickname for a five year old, not an actual name. It works the other way around, too. My mom taught English at a university in Taiwan, and some of her students picked some really ridiculous English names, like Milk and Apple. Wouldn't you be laughing too if you met someone named Milk? Anyway, I'm not saying that you should just throw away the idea of using Chinese names, I'm just saying that it would probably be smart to actually understand the language first. Just my opinion, of course, I can't tell you what to do. So yeah, that's all I have to say. Feel free to argue with me, I'm pretty bored and I'm sure an argument would be interesting.

I have the lists of Chinese names of my students, but it would feel like violating their privacy to share them, since often they're unique combinations of characters. You're right that often it's two rather than one word together. The meaning is important, but also the sound, the aesthetic of the characters and the number of strokes.

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My Chinese name is pretty cool but I'm not comfortable sharing it here since it's based on my surname. I'll just share the character corresponding to my "given" name, which is 霞 xiá ·(pron "sheea") and means "morning dew". It's apparently a common character for girls' names in my generation. One of my Chinese teachers used to call me "Xiao Xia" (ie "little Xia" but it's basically a friendly way to call people).

Mei-Lin (pronounced May-Lyn) seems to mean some kind of forest fruit; the one I know tried to get us to call her Plum, but nobody could face it.

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Ch'ien-Hue I think! Pronounced Chin-Way. Apparently means some kind of purity, because when she felt the need of an English name, the family chose Katie.

My sister's partner is half-Taiwanese and his Chinese name (also his middle name) is Li-Wei. My niece also has a Chinese name as one of her middle names (chosen by her paternal grandmother); Jia-Yu.

I'm of partial Chinese ancestry, so I'm somewhat fluent in the language. Here are my personal favourites (I included the meanings of each individual character; forgive me if my translations are incorrect):

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Qingfang (清芳): "clean", "fragrant"
Keqin (克勤): "to win", "diligent"
Yumei (玉梅): "jade", "plum"
Zizhen (子珍): "child", "precious"
Zijian (子建): "child", "build"
Yuejun (悦军): "pleased", "military"
Xiwen (曦文): "sunlight", "language"
Ruofei (若飞): "like, as", "to fly"
Jiawei (家炜): "house", "bright"
Baoshan (宝山): "treasure", "mountain"
Zhiwei (志伟): "determination", "great"

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Many more meanings can be formed depending on which characters you combine, but these are just the most common ones I could find.

This message was edited 4/22/2018, 7:30 PM