Do You Happen To Know How To Translate English Names To Chinese Without It Just Being The Phonetic Spelling?

do you happen to know how to translate english names to chinese without it just being the phonetic spelling? a native mandarin speaker brought it up to me and now i'm wondering if it would seem more natural or if i should stick with phonetic

I'm assuming by phonetic spelling you mean translating English names to the closest Chinese equivalent with pronunciation? Like my name: Julia > 朱莉娅 (zhuliya)

I've talked about names A Lot™ with my Chinese friends because I often felt that way too, that this name was.. obviously not a native Chinese name lol So sorry ahead of time, this will be a long answer!!! I LOVE NAMES

Why I've stuck with a phonetic name: All my Chinese friends said the same thing: that my name isn't super unnatural, and that I shouldn't change it because they like it and immediately think of me whenever they see it because it's distinct.

((Of course some names are probably way more unnatural than mine, too, and I'm lucky that my English name converts well to many languages lol))

I tried letting new friends on Tandem/HelloTalk pick a name for me to see what they came up with (keeping 朱, because I'm attached to it) and tbh they were pretty, and probably more normal sounding, but none of them resonated with me. I've just associated myself with "red grass girl" 🤣🤣

I feel like there's nothing wrong with converting names to the closest phonetic equivalent!! My closest friends in China and Taiwan agree.

Side tangent #1

Once someone recommended switching to 丽 (li), but then another friend told me that one was too overused. Someone recommended 立 (I think?? If not, it was another character with this radical) once too, and a guy told me it gave off vibes of independence, but 2 girls told me it was way too masculine for a girl's name. Essentially, just because one Chinese person maybe said your name was too unnatural does not mean all Chinese people feel this way. In my experience you can ask 5 Chinese people about a name and you will get 5 different answers for whether it's masc/fem, what it's associated with, whether it's common, or whether it sounds foreign. One of my friends has even met a native Chinese 朱莉娅 before, with the same characters I use!

Side tangent #2

What about the reverse, what do we think of foreigners who have English names vs. foreign names? Obviously Xiran Jay Zhao is Chinese by her name and did not pick an English name, and I think this works!! Though I do see most foreign Chinese people pick names like John, Edward, Caroline... And what do we think when we see "Edward Pan"? (潘雲安, the singer for 告五人 btw) Some of us might think "lol why did they pick that name, that's obviously not their real name." And what do we think when they pick old-fashioned names like Eunice? (Yes, I've met one) If we pick an overtly standard Chinese name, will they think similarly? But then, if we have something that's completely non-standard, what will they think of that?? They might say "oh a foreigner" but... is that such a bad thing? It's tricky!

IN CONCLUSION (and to actually answer your question... 😅)

If your name doesn't convert well phonetically, or you think the phonetic translation is too odd, (or maybe you hate your English name lmao) here's what I'd recommend for finding alternatives:

Try picking a surname character (click for a list) that sounds similar to your English name, then pick a "normal" given name! Or vice versa, use a common Chinese surname and pick a given name that has the same initial consonant/syllable as your English name but is still "normal" sounding.

Here's some resources for picking characters:

Behindthename - pretty accurate from my experience!

Everyday Chinese - good video with a PDF below of 100 common characters used in boy/girl names

My Name is Andong - I like his suggestions a lot!

Shuoshuo - She's adorable and has good advice

Shuoshuo again - Here she critiques her students' names!

(You're also more than welcome to join my discord channel, where we have a whole section dedicated to discussing names!)

HelloTalk & Tandem are great places to bounce ideas off natives. They've been super friendly and open to picking names based on the meaning of my name, pronunciation of my name, or based on characters used in classic poetry or more hip characters.

If you pick a name on your own, run it by multiple native speakers. You never know if you might've picked a homonym for an insult or a rare idiom with a negative meaning!!!

Also something else to consider: what your friends actually call you. Do my closest friends calls me 朱莉娅？ LOL NO I'm 朱朱 and 朱老师(lolz) And this is super cute, and a super normal nickname to be called in China. Literally there are a million 朱朱's lol

So maybe instead of worrying about "does it sound foreign" altogether, find one character (I'd suggest a surname or the first character of a given name) that you feel you can associate with yourself phonetically/visually/meaning-wise and then go by that in the double-repeat format of Chinese nicknames. I've been much happier since I started using 朱朱 on most platforms~~

Because I can't stop rambling, see some real life examples below:

杰里德 (Jared) youtuber who uses a phonetic name and he's very popular both here and on the Chinese version of youtube, even his Chinese girlfriend calls him 杰里德 and no one seems to care. And because it's distinct and "foreign" you can mention 杰里德 to Chinese person and they're like "the Canadian guy???" lol

Blondie in China (艾米饭) her real name is Amy, seems to have a fun but nonstandard Chinese name but she never uses it in her youtube videos so idk how people react to it!

毛毛虫 (Anastasia Koss) youtuber who complains sometimes that she gets weird comments about her name... which, she did name herself a bug, so that's not normal by Chinese name standards, but I wonder if she had picked something closer to her english name, would she get comments like that?

丹娜 (Danai) youtuber who seems to have gone with a direct phonetic translation, and tbh I think this is really cute!!

小马 (Arieh) youtuber who also has a weird name imo, since it's literally "pony" lol But tbh I don't watch him bc he bothers me so idk how people react to his name

There are also lots of phonetically-translated names for famous people and Chinese people don't seem to care??? Examples: Anne Hathaway (安妮 海瑟薇, ani haisewei), Obama (奥巴马, aobama), Romeo & Juliet (罗密欧/朱丽叶, luomiou/zhuliye)

Also for fun, here are some of my Chinese friends and their English names that I think are pretty good translations because they're partially phonetic~

佳琪 (jiaqi) > Jackie

培妤 (peiyu) > Penny

刘潇璇 (liuxiaoxuan) > Lexi