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

[Alneyan]

Disclaimer: I am not a scholar on the topic either, so you will probably want to make sure what I say is correct. *Grumbles* Chinese studies would make for a nice addition in our universities.

This page also has quite a few interesting links about names. At any rate, I would advice to check with a Chinese speaker before settling on a full name, in case you run into a very odd combination. Or perhaps you could consider using a name from a Chinese novel, which would be easier and could make for a nice reference of some sort.

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.

[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