me, myself, and jia en

Fun fact!

Okay, maybe not 'fun' but whatever

In my Chinese class at the beginning of the year we were all told we would need to have our own 'Chinese name.' Intriguing no?

It isn't uncommon for a Chinese person to adopt an English name for while they are in America because, quite simply, it causes a lot less hassle than trying to correct pronunciation.

Similarly many Americans do the same thing in China. 

A more scholarly reason for doing this would simply be because many of the syllables in American names do not correspond with possible syllables in Chinese, and likewise. This makes it practically impossible to just 'translate' an English name into a Chinese one.

Chinese names are typically made up of three parts, and start with the surname. 

The next two syllables go together to form the first name.

And traditionally the second syllable (AKA the first syllable of the first name) was the same in families for each generation, then the next generation in the family would have a different first syllable of their fist name, so that theoretically when you met a relative you could know what generation they were born in just by knowing the first syllable of their first name. 

Another thing about Chinese names is that they are very hard to just 'come up' with.

It requires an immense amount of thought and planning to create a good name that makes sense,  represents the person, and still sounds natural. So it is best if someone whom is Chinese give it to you since just picking three characters you like, such as "Summer, butterfly, courage," would make you sound incredibly stupid.

My Chinese name is as follows:

méng  jiā  ēn 

I rather like it, although I am admittedly quite partial. 

Warmest of regards,

Lauren (méng  jiā  ēn)