Do I need a chop?

Time for me to pick a new name, too. Tried to find an app for that but no luck.

It would be cowardly to go all out on 4’s but stop at just 3 of them! :stuck_out_tongue_closed_eyes:

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Do they really insist on this? :grimacing: I’m intending to open my first bank account in the next couple of days, but I’m not at all sure I’d be able to consistently sign my name in reverse order…

Actually, I’ve previously wondered what places are asking for when they’ve asked me to “sign”/“write” my name - when they use the latter I often just write it in block capitals rather than a signature (as pointless as that is) and nobody has complained yet. My “usual” signature is actually printed in my passport - not sure whether that’d help with them not requiring me to sign the forms in a different way.

I do have a chop with a Chinese name (or rather, my English name transliterated with the help of a Chinese friend), which I got ages ago, but I wasn’t intending to use it to open a bank account unless I needed to. Especially as I’ve now learned that I’d need to go to immigration and get a new ARC first… :unamused:

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My full three-character name has 18 strokes, so no problem! :no_entry_sign: :japanese_ogre:

I’m always made to thumb print every page next to my signature.

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Given the various pitfalls, I’m tending towards simply having my signature copied on to the chop, so a 1:1 correspondence with the pen-and-paper version.
Is that even possible, do they carve it by hand or have an engraving mill, or even laser, I wonder?

How do you guys/girls choose a chinese name anyways?

In my case, the boss at my first cram school recommended one - he was American, but pretty much fluent in Chinese. He suggested a common Chinese family name that sounded a little like my last name, and another common Chinese name that’s similar to a cognate (I think that’s the right word?) of my first name. (E.g. like Paul / Pablo / Paulo / Havel / Pavel.)

It’s always worked for me. I like it because it’s a totally normal Chinese name, so people are sometimes surprised to see a white face. Unlike @Steve4nLanguage, however, I’ve got to deal with too many damn strokes. Chinese name and cellphone number both: I do know them, but always feel I have to check on my phone to make sure I’ve got them right.

I have on occasion needed to sign my Chinese name multiple times - maybe it was for our mortgage? I couldn’t use the chop, for reasons I don’t remember. What was most infuriating was when I got a stroke initially wrong - which isn’t that unusual - I then had to sign again to verify, yes, I got this wrong. (I don’t think I ever reached a third level of recursion with signing to verify that I got the verification wrong.) All this despite my Chinese “signature” probably looking like that of an eight-year-old, and certainly being nothing close to consistent. Not that my English signature is any better. It’s dangerously indistinguishable from a scrawl you’d make to test a pen before purchase.

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Sounds like a nightmare. I think I would have to just give someone power of attorney in that situation. My English handwriting approximates a kindergartner’s, let alone Chinese. And at least English signatures don’t have to be legible.

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Just call yourself 一一 (or 一一一 if you’re adventurous). Problem solved! :grinning: :white_check_mark:

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My Taiwanese wife and her family helped me pick one. I adopted her surname and my given name became kind of a transliteration of my English given name but using certain characters to provide a good meaning.
Randall became 德倫 (de lun). Also my ethnicity is mostly German so the 德 plays into that. I feel like it might be a good idea to get a chop next time we visit Taiwan.

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That’s my niece’s name!
Possibly different spelling…

If you mean the three character name, I hope she doesn’t go by her initials, or things could get confusing…
:hushed:

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Just two. It’s a nickname. :slight_smile:
My Chinese name has 32 strokes. Definitely need a chop!

That is too funny. I was supposed to sign my Chinese name at some district office in Taipei to register our marriage but I looked so ill-suited for the task they took pity on me and let my wife sign.

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Do you need a stamp of an appellage, that is not your name, in a script that you can’t write?

Obviously the answer has to be yes! I am going to get a seal script one myself

Multiple chops.

Has anyone noticed that people have different chops for different purposes Like a chop for banks, a chop for random stuff like phone company, etc. Seems like a good way to protect oneself or business.

Especially for a company. Can have a chop for banks that only certain employees have access. And can have chop for more mundane things that anyone can have access.

I interface with businesses at high levels and low levels. Sometimes a low-level employee will meet me for a transaction with the company chop. I can’t imagine that this low-level maybe new hire employee has access to the entire company to do anything they want just by carrying around this one chop. I’ve literally met lower-level company employees carrying a chop and have no idea what they are supposed to do with it except do what I want to do with it.

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i have this, the one that is registered to the bank, but i also have my signature registered too so i can just sign if i like.

Then i have my regular chop that i can give to people for registering scooters etc and dont have to worry about loosing it when i’m out and about.

An interesting point, if you open a post office bank account without a chop, and use a signature instead, if you ever want to do anything with the account you must go to the same branch you opened the account with, you can’t just go to any branch like you could if you opened with a chop. No idea what happens if your branch closes down.

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Which is dumb since they have the signature on their screen so why one would need a home branch for that is beyond me