I have been given a Chinese name. Some Chinese have difficulty pronouncing western names so they sort-of transliterate them. Here are my Chinese characters which in pinyin transcribe as Dai Wei Li. This doesn't actually mean much - Dai is an old Chinese family name, Wei is to keep or protect, and Li is good manners - but apparently it's easy on Chinese ears, has a good respectful aura about it and sounds a bit like David Elliott - well, the first two syllables. Correspondingly, a fair amount of young Chinese take westernized names. In my team there's a Lucy and a Jason.
Wednesday, August 4, 2010
My new name
I have been given a Chinese name. Some Chinese have difficulty pronouncing western names so they sort-of transliterate them. Here are my Chinese characters which in pinyin transcribe as Dai Wei Li. This doesn't actually mean much - Dai is an old Chinese family name, Wei is to keep or protect, and Li is good manners - but apparently it's easy on Chinese ears, has a good respectful aura about it and sounds a bit like David Elliott - well, the first two syllables. Correspondingly, a fair amount of young Chinese take westernized names. In my team there's a Lucy and a Jason.
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Being Welsh it sounds more like a shortening of David Williams to me. [Think about it]
ReplyDeleteYou're right.
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