Couchsurfed and ending up staying with a Taiwanese family, who let me use their family name. Their mama kindly gave me a very local sounding personal name, while also being very easy to write.
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Good for you⌠
Got mine from a Chinese History teacher. Somewhat similar to my non-Chinese name, but still doesnât sound foreigner.
My surname changed, tho. I had one when I first came to Taiwan, which I also added in all my documents, but I took my wifeâs surname after getting married.
It was surprisingly easy to change it in my ARC and all other documents, too.
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what do you guys think about adding your Chinese name on to your business name card? Is it pretentious or useful, polite, cute, meaningless?
Polite, meaningful, and very useful. There are several organizations or individuals that prefer to use your Chinese name in conversation or in communication. If you do not speak fluently enough, it could still be highlight on your card. I would definitely recommend doing so.
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The Taiwanese are always super-grateful whenever they see characters instead of abc, especially with names because they wonât lose face trying to pronounce yours correctly, so go ahead and donât worry 
For my name card I use full-English on one side and full-Chinese on the other.
One note on the Chinese name. My first one was given to me by a teacher and it was the âcuteâ kind that only foreigners would use. I changed it when I started working to avoid unnecessary âooh aah hao keaiâ, although informally and among friends I still go with the old one.
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Yeah I have mixed feelings on that. Names are part of someoneâs identity. There are a lot more people (like immigrants) pushing back against getting âAmericanâ names because Americans canât pronounce anything this isnât in white English. Sometimes I wonder if I shouldnât âhelpfullyâ provide my Chinese name and just tell the nurse or whoever is looking at my NHI card (itâs all in English) that thatâs my name, deal with it.
I think itâs a completely different situation when weâre speaking of different character sets. If people followed that plan, whatâs a doctor going to do if someone writes their name in Cyrillic or Thai script, outside of Thailand or E.Europe?
And even more who insist on using an American name because they donât want to hear their original name mangled beyond recognition every day.
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Yeah but do you know which empire kinda took over a really good chunk of the world for like, a really long time? The Roman one, which used phonetic symbols that look quite a lot like the ones on this here webpage. And then there was this other empire, called the British Empire, which also kinda actually took over the world, kinda sorta around the same time that the Roman one hadnât entirely fallen yet. But guess what!? Them Brits used the same alphabet as the Romans, cuz the Romans had taken over that land! This is why a lot of formerly non-written languages (like many in SEA, Hmong, etc.) use the roman script, albeit somewhat adapted.
If youâre going to work in medicine, you NEED to be able to read the roman alphabet because medicine, research papers, and various diseases, all of which are a critical part of your job, use it. Itâs one thing to forgive some poor soul who pushes papers all day for not being able to read your name. It is something else entirely to forgive someone who is responsible for your medical needs for not being able to sound out your name. If they canât sound out your name, do you think they can sound out the name of the drug they just prescribed if itâs not translated into Chinese? There are a LOT of drugs that have almost exactly the same name, off by a letter or two, with VERY different purposes. It worries me how many doctors Iâve been to in Taipei that claim to have gotten their medical degrees from âha-fu-ah you-vah-s-teeâ that also can only write down the English name of what they think is wrong with me because they donât know how to pronounce it. Weâre talking about very common ailments, not some obscure, Dr. House is the only other person whoâs herd of it sorts of diagnoses.
Thatâs the kind of colonial spirit we need to get back.
Russia had a bigger chunk, and is still big. Letâs all get Russian names.
Me, I only have my English name on my NHI card and Iâve never had a problem getting identified at a hospital or clinic, dental or medical, or even a pharmacy, across 17 years and 2 surgeries and a chronic illness. Nor have I been misdiagnosed or given the wrong medication because a doctor or nurse couldnât read my medical records.
I only got an official Chinese name a year ago because someone on here said it possible to put it on your ARC.
As someone who has lived here for approximately a vagillion years and has never even had this come up, I expected the results of this poll to be pretty much the exact opposite of this. What am I missing? Why would I want or need an official Mandarin name? Iâm perplexed. I have an APRC, NHI, bank account, credit card, driverâs license, and all the other usual shit and have never been asked to create an official Mandarin name. I have one on my business card that was created for me by my secretary the first week I was here, but nobody calls me that and itâs not registered anywhere.
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I asked that for years, but some people insist one is needed, as well as a chop, even to open a bank account. Some people may need one for doing certain types of business. For some online shopping sites, you can only sign up with a Chinese name. If you prepay, sometimes you need to show an ID, but before I had it Iâd just use my real name in phonetic Chinese.
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Interesting. I donât do much online shopping here, so maybe thatâs why, but Iâve never needed to even have a phonetic Chinese version of my name. Just my regular olâ name, in the regular English alphabet, for my banking and everything else. I didnât even realize it was a regular thing for anyone to do otherwise.
My parents gave me a name. I donât need another one.