I don’t always make it known to people – my chinese name. But there is something one can be very proud of with one’s chinese name. All parents would always make sure that they give their children a good name. Preferrably a name that people can’t make fun of – they can hope anyway.

In a way like the Red Indians, Chinese are the same too when they give names that have a specific meaning. You know like how you read or watch in some movies, they have the Red Indian tribes that would name say their daughter..soemthing like Tiger Lily or Flower petal (I’m assuming these are names that represent beauty for the girls). 

So think of it that way too with the Chinese names. Like my chinese name is Yin Foong, not including my surname which is Low. It’s interesting when I was younger I never liked my asian heritage as much as I do now. Sad in a way too. In school I would be forced to learn how to write Mandarin, at least I knew how to write my own chinese name. Which looks like so… 

Yin (the first chinese character) in it’s literal translation in Mandarin anyway means silver. And the Foong (other two Chinese characters mean phoenix). There’s a big difference to how you would write phoenix. You can either be relating it to the male phoenix, or the female phoenix, or naming it as the lengendary phoenix. See the middle chinese character (?) represents the phoenix. While the last character (?) represents the gender or rather what kind of phoenix you are referring too. At least that’s how i understand it base on the sites i’m reading.  So in this sense mine would mean the female legendary phoenix.

Bit of background on the terms phoenix 

 

This is the word that translates as “Legendary Phoenix” in Chinese. This refers to the bird that according to Chinese folklore, rose from the fiery ashes. The phoenix and dragon are by far the most famous creatures in Chinese mythology.

This is the simplest way to write “Phoenix” in Chinese. Because dragon is usually expressed as a single character, when you see “dragon andphoenix” written in Chinese, you’ll often see this single-character version. Please note, this is also the male element of phoenix, so it also means “malephoenix bird”.

 

This is another simple way to write “Phoenix” in Chinese. This is the specifically female element of phoenix, so this is how you write “femalephoenix“. This character is sometimes used to represent the female empress (many times in history, China was ruled by a woman, in much the same way queens came to power in Europe).  Note that the emperor is always represented as a dragon (not the male version of phoenix). If you see yourself as a strong woman, this might be scroll for you to express “woman power” or “powerful woman” in a cool way.

Yeah so anyway, I thought it would be cool, to just share that piece of information on my Chinese name bwhahahaa. Plus I found this cool site that translates your name into chinese characters here at Chinese-tools. Then you can take those characters and have them on a image like so. 

Ok ok i give kudos to my parents, because i really do think the name is pretty cool. How often can you tell people that your real name really is Silver Phoenix as stated on your ID card. Even if the bird is a myth, it’s probably one of the coolest mythological creatures, which has always fought on the side of good – according to fantast novels anyway..and Harry Potter… and Narnia.. and Fushigi Yuugi and so on so forth