8 thoughts on “Common Taiwanese given names”

1. Do parents really pick a name as western parents might, or do they pick two individual characters and combine them? For example, British parents may decide to give their son a popular name, e.g. Oliver, but would Taiwanese parents think “Guanyu is a nice name, we know a few people whose son has that name, let’s call him that.” Or do they decide they want a particular first character, then decide on the second character? The PDF would appear to show the former may be true, with certain names remaining the most popular year after year, but this could also be true if certain individual characters are popular.

   I see the linked page gives the most popular characters used in given names, but would this be different for the first and second characters?

   It’s also fairly common for siblings to be given the same first character, differentiated by the second, which isn’t really possible with western names.

2. Another factor important to many is the total number of strokes it takes to write the complete name in Chinese characters, with some counts deemed lucky and others unluckly. That there are now surely apps and websites to help with this sort of superstition may increase its use.

   On the other hand, in general I tend to think that people get too tied up with Chinese characters — and I see that too when looking at names. I’m not saying they’re not important — just not the only factor. For example, the fact that there are homophones and near homophones among these names — e.g., Jiālíng (佳玲 and 嘉玲), Jìngyí (靜宜 and 靜怡), Wǎntíng (婉婷 and 琬婷), and Xīnyí (心怡, 欣怡, and 馨儀) — clearly reveals the importance of sound in some of these choices.

3. Pingback: Most Common Taiwanese Given Names | Pinyin News

4. Very interesting!
   I always liked the name Meiling, but I thought it was an overused and stereotypical name.

5. Once, at a baseball game between the United States and Taiwan, I saw someone with a sign that read “宋美齡” (Soong Mei-ling, a.k.a. Mme. Chiang Kai-shek). By that they meant that the Taiwan team should “sòng Měi líng” (送美零), i.e., “give America a zero” (shut-out). A nice pun.

6. A Hokkien nephew in SIngapore has been named Po Soon.
   Brought up speaking only English, he has no idea of the characters or what
   they mean. I feel the Po is `precious’ (?) but cannot find any likely character
   for `Soon’. Any ideas?

7. It’s also fairly common for siblings to be given the same first character, differentiated by the second, which isn’t really possible with western names.

8. @Alan Yu: My mother-in-law and her siblings have names like you described. But this isn’t a matter writing with Chinese characters or not, or Western names or not. You’re confusing lack of tradition with impossibility. My mother-in-law and her siblings have the same initial morpheme in their names regardless of whether it is written as a Chinese character or in romanization. And it is of course entirely possible for people to do the same with Western names. An extreme example would be the names of George Foreman’s sons: George Edward Foreman, George Edward Foreman, George Edward Foreman, George Edward Foreman, and George Edward Foreman.