At least in English , we get a lot of Chinese names like Fu Wi and other names that are very short. (both first and last names are short)
On the other hand I see Indian names that are very long. (Asian Indian)
Is this related to the way they are translated to English? I guess not but I was just wondering about this.
I have no idea, but here’s a guess: Chinese is a tonal language, which conveys information not just via the sequence of sounds and word order, but also by the tone (pitch). As far as I know, Indian languages are not (apparently with one exception, Punjabi).
If you can distinguish words based not just on the sequence of vowels and consonants and on context but also based on tone, it seems to me you could get by with shorter words?
If you’re thinking of Apu and Raj from TV, well, they’re TV characters, and Apu’s long last name isn’t even genuine Indian. India has plenty of people with names like Shobha De and Ritu Sen.
I’ve noticed this in Thai. There are some bestsellers co-authored by a Thai and a Brit whose surnames, rendered in English, are
Phongpaichit & Baker
12 and 5 letters respectively. Rendered in Thai the names are
พงษ์ไพจิตร & เบเคอร์
9 and 6 letters respectively (ignoring the “silencing mark” each name happens to have). And, BTW, two of the consonants in the Thai rendering of Phongpaichit are silent vestiges, like the ‘gh’ in ‘night,’ that are NOT present in the English rendering (which would otherwise be Phongsepaichitra). Ignoring them, ‘Phongpaichit’ needs only 5 consonants and 2 vowels to render.
Similarly the surname of two recent Thai Prime Ministers is 10 symbols in English (‘Shinawatra’) but only 7 in Thai (ชินวัตร).
Yes the chinese writing system languages seem to have locked down to short words, and for any two syllable words they tend to weakly pronounce the final consonant sound if not syllable…
Take a Sanksrit name… Ok I picked a long one which was a likely candidate… Alakananda …
Looked it up, Nada is is the sankskrit word for river… So probably its “Alaka River”, slightly corrupted.
While I was looking at the entry for River, I saw a synonym of river… kakudmikanyA = mountain-daughter . Long sanskrit words are like that … look at the official title of the city we call Bangkok.
Never heard of Apu and Raj. What show are they on?
“Ananda” is something like ‘bliss’ or ‘joy’. It’s a common name or element of names.
But when you’re reading someone’s name, as opposed to hearing it - how do you know what tone to assign it?
Short Chinese names are phonetic transcriptions of the chinese characters that make up the name, typically using pinyin or some other phonetic system. Typical Chinese names consist of two or three characters, and most Chinese characters are one syllable in length.
Assuming you’re reading a latin-alphabet transcription without tone marks, you guess. Some characters are more commonly found in names than others, so that helps. In addition, if the full name consists of three characters, one character is typically the family name and the other two are the given name. So for the given name, you can pick out character combinations that seem to make sense together as a name. But otherwise you take a shot, and the person corrects you if you get it wrong.
The Simpsons. Apu’s last name is Nahasapeemapetilon.
Just to add on to Caldazar’s excellent into
Chinese have 200 or so family names. Most are single syllable such as the most common Li or Chen or Wang but there are a handful of two character surnames such as Si-ma and Ou-yang.
Majority of Chinese have a first and middle name. Traditionally, the first name is a “generational” name. Everyone (or more traditionally the males) of a very extended family of the same generation share the same first name, and then have a unique middle name.
It is not uncommon though to have only a first name without a generational connection. For example, this is very common in Shanghai. Actress Joan Chen’s chinese name is Chen Chong. As in family name “Chen” and name is “Chong” with no generational aspect.
If you go to the countryside/ancestral village. EVERYONE in the village has the same surname. EVERYONE (or traditionally the males of that generation) have the same first name. There will be an ancestral hall or temple where one can see all the living generations names written out. Additional trivia is that the elders (male) of a generation are actually called “Grandfather #8”. My father in law left his village at 13 and has not returned to live in 67 years, but when he goes back he tells anyone in the village that he is “Grandfather #13” and they all know who he is.
Indians have a wide variety of naming customs too, depending on ethnic group. For example, Tamils traditionally didn’t have last names, though this is in the process of changing. A man was identified by his ancestral village name, patronymic, and given name (in that order, the first two usually abbreviated to initials). So, Malarvizhi the son of Kannan, ancestrally rooted in the village of Kalpat, would be named K. K. Malarvizhi.
Raj is on Big Bang Theory. His full name is Rajesh Ramayan Koothrappali. The actor who plays him, Kunal Nayyar, has a rather shorter name.
You know who have long names? Sri Lankans.
[Warnakulasuriya Patabendige Ushantha Joseph Chaminda Vaas](Warnakulasuriya Patabendige Ushantha Joseph Chaminda Vaas)
Malagasy, too. The current president of Madagascar is named Hery Rajaonarimampianina. His predecessor’s surname was Rajoelina, and before him Ravalomanana.
Just to give some measure of how long these names are: Phongpaichit is three syllables (just like Benjamin), Koothrappali is four syllables (just like Alexander), and Alakananda is five syllables (just like Maximilian). And that some people happen to have first, middle, and last names is not uncommon even in the West.
I’m not saying it explains the whole phenomenon away, but I will say a significant part of the sometimes voiced idea that these names are unwieldily long is not actually their length, but rather their unfamiliarity to the person doing the appraising.
Incidentally, I have an Indian name. My first name is two syllables, my last name is two syllables, and I have no middle name.
In the US, it’s the default assumption.
Because I knew what you meant, I had to read that a few times to make sense of it…
Everyone has the same family name. Everyone has a generation name. Finally, everyone has a personal name.
Forename=family. Middle name = generation. Surname = personal.
AFAIK, the middle-last (generational-personal) pair is represented by a single (archaic) character, which also has a meaning, like the English tradition of “Faith” “Hope” , “April” or “May”. Although they have a “meaning”, most of these characters (there are thousands of them) are never used except to represent names.
okay, let me clarify. I’m using “surname” or “family name” the same way as you are using “Forename” and in America it’s usually referred to as “last name”.
Chinese names are reversed versus the west. Therefore, the “last name” comes first, then comes the generational name (usually but not always shared by the males of that generation), and finally the unique middle name (I haven’t heard it referred to as “personal name” but that is a good descriptor).
Usually the generational name is a commonly used character (not an archaic character).
The “personal name” is usually a common character. These can be more obscure or literary in nature. It’s pretty rare to see a “personal name” that is so uncommon that it would not be commonly recognized by a native speaker. Hell, at my best I knew about 5000 characters, and have forgotten a big chunk of those, but more often than not I can read the name printed on a business card. It’s a great talking horse trick.
For example, the current leader of China is XI Jinping (习近平). Thus, the family name/last name/surname is XI. His generational first name is “Jin” and his unique middle name in “ping”. All three characters are covered in first year Chinese for students studying Chinese as a second language.
The former leader of China DENG Xiaoping (邓小平). DENG is pretty much only used as a family name. Xiaoping are both extremely common characters, and “Ping” as the unique name is shared by both men. So the “unique” name is “unique” only in the context of the generation for that clan.