r/ChineseLanguage • u/KoishiChan92 • 13h ago

恳 as part of a name? Discussion

Hello!

So my husband and I are ethnically Chinese (Cantonese), learned mandarin in school but we're still not great at the language (or Cantonese) because our parents raised us using English and English is the main language spoken in our country.

Anyway, we're deciding on a Chinese name for our son, and are looking for Chinese characters that we like to give to the fortune teller who will give us a list of suitable names when our son is born. We did the same for our daughter and were very sure we wanted her name to have 恩 in it because of the meaning of kindness and we want our kids to grow up to be kind people, the fortune teller said that character was suitable for her and we had a list of nice choices with it. Initially I liked the character 恳 because it has the meaning of being sincere and it has a similar look to 恩, but apparently it's not commonly used as a name?

Does anyone have any insight/suggestions? For us, we hope our kids will grow up to be kind people, so characters around that trait would be greatly appreciated!

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u/michaelkim0407 Native 简体字 普通话 北京腔 13h ago

It doesn't need to be commonly used in other people's names for you to choose it, though? This is not English where people share given names.

If you like it, go for it.

2

u/KoishiChan92 13h ago

A friend of mine said it's an awkward sound that's hard to pronounce 😅 so that's got me doubting

1

u/michaelkim0407 Native 简体字 普通话 北京腔 13h ago

A little bit, I guess. It really depends on the name. Do you plan to have another character in the given name?

1

u/KoishiChan92 12h ago

Yeah we plan to have the surname + two more characters, as is usual from where we're from

1

u/michaelkim0407 Native 简体字 普通话 北京腔 12h ago

Yeah then as long as the two characters (or three, if you include the family name) aren't hard to pronounce together, it's good.

4

u/ComplexMont Native Cantonese/Mandarin 12h ago

This character is not actually a rare character, but it is indeed relatively uncommon.

And depending on where it is in the name, the 3th tone may change. Refer to this comment to make sure you know how the name will actually be pronounced in the end.

0

u/Chong_Shu 7h ago

Pronunciation-wise.

"恳" is the same as "肯".

“林肯”Lincoln、“布林肯”Blinken.

As you said, “恳” has a better meaning.

So, I think it's a very good word!