Chinese Name Generator

The Chinese Name Generator shows one to ten romanized Chinese names per click, each on a card with its meaning: Meiling, "beautiful and delicate"; Dingbang, "one who protects his country"; Bao, "jewel, treasure, precious." The list has 155 names, 71 tagged male, 58 female and 26 unisex. Names are given in pinyin or a Cantonese-style spelling with no Chinese characters, so this is a tool for picking a name and its meaning, not for learning how it's written.

Settings

• Number of Chinese names: 1 to 10 per click, default 1. Batches are shuffled without repeats.
• Gender: Random, Male, Female or Unisex. Random draws from all 155.

What the list contains

Most entries are single-syllable or two-syllable given names: Ai, Bai, Chen, Feng, Hao, Jing, Lan, Ming, Qiang, Rong, Shan, Yun; Caihong, Biming, Delun, Liling, Longwei, Qinyang. About twenty are full names in surname-first order, built on the most common surnames in China: Wang Wei, Wang Fang, Li Na, Li Jun, Zhang Wei, Zhang Min, Liu Wei. Those full names are also the most statistically common names in the country, which makes them useful when a story needs a believable everyman rather than a memorable one.

The meanings are short English glosses. Because pinyin drops the characters and the tones, one romanized name can stand for several different written names with different meanings; the meaning shown is one common reading, not the only one. If you're picking a name to actually use, confirm the characters with a native speaker or a dictionary.

How Chinese names are structured

A few points that make generated names easier to use correctly:

• Surname first. In "Wang Wei," Wang is the family name. Around a fifth of the population shares one of the top five surnames (Wang, Li, Zhang, Liu, Chen), which is why the full names on the list use them.
• Given names are one or two characters. Two-character names (Meiling, Longwei) are more common today; single-character names (Wei, Na, Jing) were very common for people born in the 1970s and 80s.
• Meaning is chosen, not inherited. Parents pick characters for their meaning and sound, often aiming for virtues (Hui, "clever"; Cheng, "sincere"), nature (Lan, "orchid"; Feng, "phoenix" or "maple"), or aspirations (Fu, "prosperous"; Guang, "light").
• Gender is a tendency, not a rule. Names about beauty, flowers and jade (Mei, Hua, Ju, Bi) lean female; names about strength, order and country (Gang, Delun, Dingbang) lean male; many (An, Bao, Chun, Le, Hui) are used for both, and those are tagged unisex here.
• Romanization varies. Mainland names use pinyin (Zhang, Qiang); Hong Kong and older overseas spellings look different (Cheung, Keung, Lee). The list mixes both, so match the spelling to the character's background.

Sample output

Where it helps

• Characters in fiction, games and screenplays set in China or with Chinese-heritage characters, where the meaning can echo the role.
• Choosing a Chinese name for yourself as a language learner. A common approach is to pick a given name whose meaning you like and pair it with a surname that sounds like your own; this list supplies the first half.
• Test data and placeholders that need realistic East Asian names instead of "John Smith."
• Baby-name shortlists as a starting point, to be checked against the characters and tones with family.

Other cultural name tools on the site follow the same layout: the German Name Generator and Austrian Name Generator for German-speaking names, the Random Last Name Generator for surnames from many countries, and the Unisex Name Generator for gender-neutral picks in English. All of them are under all name generators.