Customer Reviews

Choosing Auspicious Chinese Names

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book explains the ancient calculations involved in choosing a Chinese name. It uses Mandarin pinyin and simplified characters and is writen in English. The ancient theories include: the 5 elements; number of strokes for yin-yang; the lunar birthdate and 8 characters; and the Chinese horoscope. As well, 300 English names are translated into Chinese.

This book provides an excellent explanation of the "science" of picking a Chinese name. It describes the significance of "elements" (e.g., gold, fire, earth, etc.), the date and time of your child's birth, and the number of strokes to selecting a name. By breaking down the process of choosing a name into readily digestible steps, this book makes the process very understandable and actually somewhat fun (versus some other books on this same topic.).

This book rates a "4" instead of "5" as a result of two issues -- both of which are surmountable. First, the book is not current; it only provides the necessary charts relating to the date/time of birth through the end of 1999.

BUT -- anyone with even a trivial understanding of Microsoft Excel can readily create a chart that extrapolates the necessary charts through to the present. After all, the table entries REPEAT every 60 entries, and thus all you need to do is manually create a calendar in Excel and map the entries to the calendar.

Second, the book does not (cannot) adequately prevent you from choosing unbelievably stupid combinations. For example, the characters "Ying" and "Man" (in Cantonese) are acceptable choices for the first and middle characters. Of course, together these words mean "English." Thus, you really must ask a native Chinese speaker to doublecheck whatever name you select.

Good book, and good luck.

Good book overall, but for some sections where there are recommendations for names or elements, the book stops at the year 2000, so it's useless for people like me who's trying to find names for new baby born in 2001.

This book is very comprehensive....perhaps too much so for the casual user who just would like to translate their name into a Chinese sounding name, with no concerns about the accuracy of the process, such as balancing Ying/Yang, and the elemental balance. The book is very well organized and walks the readers thru the process of selecting a name in great detail. This is the real deal, and should not be considered for casual use...it would be too complicated for the user.

I am considering this book since I'm looking for an auspicious name for my baby who will be born next year (2003). But according to one of the readers, it is outdated if you need to determine the best name for year 2001 onwards.
Will the author Evelyn Lip considering of
publishing new edition for year 2002 onwards so that
we can determine what is the best name base on the element and
birth date.

My wife and I are from India. We recently had a baby daughter. We had lots of fun applying Chinese naming principles to Indian names. Hope the name's auspicious for our daughter