Hi all,

We are expecting with my wife, and we would like to name our baby with a foreign name (Jack, Bryan etc.) but have the last name of my wife (Chinese nationality/Chinese name) can any one tell us if its doable? For example, Jack Wong but of course translated to Chinese and written in Chinese characters. Please anyone share his/her experience/opinion.

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Do them separately. For the Chinese name, use a Chinese name. For the foreign name, which you'll want to use on the child's passport - use the foreign name. Trying to make them look or sound the same can sometimes have disastrous consequence - for example...the name Roger in English is fine - but ask your wife about this sound in Chinese...

We started with a foreign name, which can be easily and harmlesly pronounced in Chinese, and therefore transliterated into Chinese written language.

Our son now has this Chinese name, which can be pronounced (more or less) according to foreign pronounciation. Observing however, that this particular foreign name can be pronounced in two different ways abroad.

However, when we got his Chinese passport, his Chinese name was transliterated into Pinyin and then it no longer matched the expected English form of name.

If we in future get him foreign passport, he will have my family name on it, and the given name is initially required to be exact Pinyin version of his Chinese name.

We can then separately request to have this name changed into correct foreign version.

Not quite the answer you're looking for but I'll tell you the way me and my wife went with our son.

We gave him an English first and my family name but with his middle name which his grandparents gave him, we translated the written Chinese characters into pinyin and it works fine as a Chinese or English sounding word.

@BlueBird, let us apply your idea. Let us say his name is Jack Wong, Jack in Chinese is 插口, in pinyin is "Chakou", and there are no "Wong" in mandarin, the equivalent is "Huang". Therefore, your son equivalent English name in China is his Chinese name in pinyin.. which is Chakou Huang and not Jack Wong, but if she gave birth in Hong Kong, then Jack Wong is acceptable.

Or Wang is pronounced Wong in mainland China, and I believe both HK Wong, and mainland Wang use the same written character.

Wong in Hong Kong, a Cantonese-speaking society, is often the spelling of 2 different Chinese-surname characters both spelled Wang in pinyin, as well as of the surname character spelled Huang in pinyin.

@Vicar: For most economic, communication, financial and political processes we're all merely numbers these days anyway, all over the world.