[OT] Chinese & Indian names. Need help for writing

[dogscoff]

Heh, the mother is certainly a forceful personality, but then the father certainly isn't a pushover.

Damn, I just can't wait for all you guys to read this.

This page also has quite a few interesting links about names.

Thanks, but as you so rightly point out...

At any rate, I would advice to check with a Chinese speaker before settling on a full name,

Which is kind of what I was hoping to achieve by posting here. We have a very diverse community on the forum here, and I was hoping someone would pipe up with "Oh yeah, I'm chinese, I can help."

Once more, I beg everyone's indulgence in my never-ending quest to avoid actual research.

On another note, age is counted differently in Chinese than in our societies: a baby is born one-year-old, and your age increases on the New Year. The actual birthday is still on the day of the birth. I do not know if this will have any influence on your book, however.

Not at the moment, but worth knowing. THanks.

[Alneyan]

Deccan may be able to help you, but he is currently on holidays. Perhaps he is reading his mail, but I wouldn't know for sure.

There were a few other Chinese speakers on the Dominions boards, but I do not think they are still around. Still, it might be worth it to make another post there, if nobody can help you on the SEIV forums.

[dogscoff]

Aha! Why make up a name when I can steal one? My brother's superlative idea.

www.phonebookofhongkong.com

[sachmo]

"Any similarity to persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. Unless you live in Hong Kong."

[dogscoff]

Haha. Of course, if anyone knowledgable still wants to help out, that would be great as well.

[TerranC]

The character I'm most worried about is a male from a long line of military commanders, so a strong, 'warrior' name would be good. So far I'm using the family name "Cheng"

http://www.zhongwen.com/ gives 2 matches for "warrior": Zhuang Shi and Wu Shi. Since Shi seems to mean "officer", I suppose you could call him Zhuang or Wu instead of Cheng.

He's probably from the more northern regions of China, if that makes a difference.

It could; China has 56 ethnic groups officially recognized by the PRC government, and then some. Some ethnic groups could have their own family names.

Our man winds up in India (Bengal area) where he marries an Indian woman. I am provisionally naming her "Bhavya", which websites indicate to be a valid given name for a strong, female Indian character. I haven't gone looking for a family name for her because (a) her unmarried name is unimportant to the story and (b) I'm afraid of stumbling face-first into another cultural quagmire. However if anyone can advise on this, and perhaps suggest a sensible surname I would again be grateful. I figure her married name would probably be "Cheng Bhavya", but I doubt there would be any set rules on such 'hybrid' names, so I'm not overly worried about that.

Don't know much about indian names, sorry. You can always choose the easy way by saying she adheres to the Sikh religion and give her the name of (something) Kaur.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sikh#Sikh_Names