[jaykay]

Originally Posted by nicolejoy

For the "English name" on the birth cert, I want to JUST write the English name, NOT the romanisation of the Chinese name. Is that ok?? Does anyone know?? I want to give an English first name, an English middle name - but NOT write the Chinese romanisation. Then when it says "Chinese name", JUST write the Chinese name in Chinese... Is that acceptable over here??

Yes no problem, Chinese and English names can be completely different. Not an issue at all.

[nicolejoy]

Oh great - mostly I see that on peoples' "English Names", they have the romanisation of their Chinese name - which can look really weird, depending on what it is!!

[jools]

You may also want to look into what the name means, that helped us find the names that we wanted. When our daughter was born we had picked out two names that we liked. She popped out and we both looked at each other and said well she's neither of those, so we then had to find a name that matched her. It's so exciting to chose your baby's name and so important to get it right, so maybe have some ideas, but wait until you see their little face and let them help you decide.

[nicolejoy]

We're making a BIT of progress, we've got a few names that we both "like" - hopefully one of them will match when we finally meet baby!!! Chinese names, we've got NO idea... I think that we're gonna ask FIL to help there!! If he gives us a few ideas, we might choose between them...

[mrg9192]

My wife was pretty relaxed about naming for child #1, a daughter, for either the Chinese or English name. And for the new baby coming, I'd actually like her to start putting more thought into it. Only a month to go. I really want to go with an Irish name. But for many of the really Irish names (non-anglicized spelling) I have hard enough time pronouncing the name, so can't really expect my wife or the Chinese people around to her to get it right. E.g. for our daughter, I really liked Saoirse, but I just knew that no one here in Shenzhen was ever going to get it right and pronounce it Seer-sha..

[mrg9192]

My wife was pretty relaxed about naming for child #1, a daughter, for either the Chinese or English name. And for the new baby coming, I'd actually like her to start putting more thought into it. Only a month to go. I really want to go with an Irish name. But for many of the really Irish names (non-anglicized) I have hard enough time pronouncing the name from the spelling, so can't really expect my wife or the Chinese people around to her to get it right. E.g. for our daughter, I really liked Saoirse, but I just knew that no one here in Shenzhen was ever going to get it right and pronounce it Seer-sha.

[Sucellia]

Hello.

What we did was as below.

If baby is boy:
--> My husband chose the first name and I will give a middle name.

If baby is girl:
--> I chose the first name and my husband gives a middle name.

Our baby happened to be a boy so my husband (British) gave a English first name and I (Japanese) gave a Japanese middle name to our son. We are quite happy with this arrangement.

But one thing both of us agreed before we named our baby is, if one of us HATE or DISLIKE the name the partner chose, we will not use that one. The both of us have to at least "like" the name. You know, you never want to give a name you HATE or DISLIKE to your own baby. So this was very important to us.

Good luck!

Sucellia

[Sucellia]

By the way, when we (both my husband and I) chose the name, we explained to each other why we chose that one. It was important for us because my husband does not speak any Japanese so he needs to know the reason and meaning of the name (and vice versa for me, too). After we explained the reasons and meanings to each other, we were very happy with the name we chose.

Each Japanese text (Kanji - Chinese character) has a different meaning and quite often has more than one meanings so it was not easy to chose the Kanji with great sound and meaning at the same time! But both my husband and I love the name we gave it to our son now.