Names in Chinese

From the first contacts between China and Occident presented to itself the problem of the trascripción of the names of a language in other. Since the completely different Chinese writing system and the western sound, it was necessary to look for words that were reflecting, not always with veracity, the sounds of the foreign language. The first attempts were for sinizar the Christian names, and latinizar the Chinese.

In the process of transcribing to the Chinese the western names, generally one looked for a few characters which sound was resembling the western one, and whose meaning was if possible auspicioso.

Thus France was transcribed like Faguo (The country of the Law), Germany like Deguo (The country of the Virtue), England like Yingguo (The country of the Heroes), and Spain as Xibanya (literally West + Matter + Tooth). The fact is that Spain is different.

With the names of the persons the process has been similar, and to every western name there him collaborate now a few Chinese characters used by translators and journalists when they mention the above mentioned name.

The Chinese have always had a big respect to the names. In fact, the finished name of a person one was not allowing the whole world to mention it. To have a daughter was considered of bad luck by the possibility that the surname should become extinct, and one of the worst punishments that it was possible to exercise on a person, it was finishing with all his lineage.

Nowadays they are still the Chinese much made fond of recording his name in stamps (formerly it was substituting the signatures), to give him calligraphies, or to hang paintings of flowers and dragons with the name of the children.

In China the names consist of two or three characters, and sometimes of four. It is for it that we will transform all the western names into Chinese names of two, three or four characters, which sound is as seemed as possible to the original, and his meaning, auspicioso, since the literal translation of the western names, only it gives absurd results.

Wei Hua, our collaborating artist, has prepared a few interesting designs with the Chinese names, or with any other word auspiciosa.

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