I'm so interested in my name and surname! How to say it in Chinese? O_o English: Polunina Halyna Chinese: ...........?..........

Galya

Mar 29, 2015 5:37 PM

Corrections · 5

I'm so interested in my name and surname! How to say it in Chinese? O_o

English: Polunina Halyna
Chinese: ...........?..........

Since you asked, I will comment. There is no equivalent in Chinese for your name. Alphabetic languages are sound based while logographic languages (which Chinese is the only survivor) are based on semantics. Therefore your name is just a series of sounds. Unless you are into ancient languages, even common names like "John" and "Mary" have meanings ("YAHWEH is gracious" and "beloved" respectvely), not many people will know of it.

There are three ways of getting a Chinese version. The easiest one is to get a new but full fledged Chinese name complete with the last name. If you know of the meaning of your name, then do a translation of it. However, this is usually not possible and so we have the most common way, that is to approximate the original sounds. However, this is fraught with land mines! It may sound the same, but in Chinese, it could mean something different, worse still, something very unsavory. Therefore the ideal way is that both the sound and meaning must be good!

Let's take your first name, Polunina. This already has 4 syllables... Most Chinese names including their last names have only three. Only in the rare cases when there is a "double character" last name that they have four. Japanese also uses Chinese character for their names and can have many more syllables (because their last names usually come from a place. For example, Yanagida, 柳田 willow field. Anyway, it will sound Japanese and not Chinese.

From the way I pronounce your name as in English, (sorry I don't know Ukranian or Russian), the Chinese sounds (in this case, Mandarin) I would use 宝路玲娜 which for character by character translation means, "precious road tinkling-of-jade-sounds elegance/graceful" Thus this version of your name means, "the elegant tinkling sounds of jade made on an imperial road" The sound would "baolulingna"

Halyna, I would use, 霞裡那 = colorful-inside-that or "that inside of the evening clouds". In Mandarin, it would be "Hsialyna" (Halyna in Cantonese).

This is the best I can do. Hope to hear from other suggestions.

March 30, 2015