Finding my Chinese name My first name is Matheson, and I'm trying to find a good Chinese name that sounds similar. 'Matheson' as a first name is very, very rare. 'Matheson' is quite a common last name in Scotland and England, however, so I went to Wikipedia to look for famous people with the last name 'Matheson' to see how it was written in Chinese. I was looking at the Chinese translation of the Wikipedia page about Sir James Matheson, and his name was written as 马地臣. Would that be good for me to use as a Chinese FIRST name? Does the character for ‘horse’ in a name sound powerful (in a good way?), or really stupid?! :-) In English, my name is pronounced as two syllables, NOT as three. I've attached a recording of me saying my name. In the International Phonetic Alphabet, it's: /ˈmæθ.sən/ Given that there's no 'th' sound [θ] in Chinese, the closest equivalent would be [s] (I would like to avoid [t]). Also, [æ] sounds closer to 'e' than to 'a'. So, 'Messen' (which means 'measure' in German) sounds very similar to what I'd like my name to sound like in Chinese. You can hear the German word being pronounced here: http://www.forvo.com/word/messen/#de Which characters would capture the sound of 'Messen'? (Or is it perhaps a bad idea to try to copy the sound? Would it be wiser to create something completely original based on meaning?) Any suggestions? 谢谢