If you want to have your name translated to Chinese, go to Google, and you can find something interesting. There are some names listing on Internet which translate every common English name to Chinese, like this girls' names:
Abie阿碧
Adele阿黛尔
Adeline艾德琳
Adriana阿德里亚娜
Aeryn艾琳
However, from Chinese perspective, these names do not make any sense. They just translated the English pronunciation to several Chinese characters, which are supposed to have similar pronunciation. Also, these characters are chosen from a set of characters, which are suitable for translating names.
It’s reported that China authority has define a rule of how to translate foreign names to Chinese based on these special characters.
For instance, we can see several ‘阿’ in the above example, it just has pronunciation like ‘a’ and it’s a very simple character. It has no actual meaning and usually are used with other characters in names.
In Chinese, there is normally not only one character corresponding to one pronunciation. For instance, ‘艾’ in the Adeline and Aeryn, another character ‘爱’ are same in spoken. But ‘爱’ is a bigger word, the English name for it is love. 爱琳 sounds better than艾琳.
So, it makes perfect sense on which character you choose. sometime it’s even more important than picking up the character with the same pronunciation. Let’s say the most famous Canadian in China, Dr. Bethune, he is know as "Bai Qiu-en" (白求恩) in Chinese. The pronunciations are little bit different but this translation seems perfect. 求恩 is from Bethune, which are simple and good characters and could imply ‘pursuing kindness, grace’.
I have to say if you want a good Chinese name, then forget about the lists, study Chinese language or consult with your Chinese friend, with imagination and understanding in Chinese, you may have a beautiful Chinese name envied by native Chinese people.
