# 唐丁



## 123xyz

In my Chinese class, in which I've enrolled just recently, the teacher has assigned Chinese names to all of the students, apparently for the sake of convenience, but he hasn't explained what they are supposed to mean, if anything, so I was hoping that someone in this forum could shed some light on mine. As far as I understood, it's written as "唐丁" and pronounced as "Táng Dīng". However, when I looked up the characters, I didn't arrive at anything conclusive. Apparently, the first character means "to exaggerate", "empty", "in vain" or "Tang Dynasty", whereas the second means "fourth". Is this correct? Either way, does my name mean anything as a whole? 

Thank you in advance


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## retrogradedwithwind

Is there another person whose name is 唐甲 or 唐乙?

唐 is a very common family name in China. 丁 means fourth or an adult male.


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## brofeelgood

Typically, the "given" Chinese name is a transliteration of the first syllables of your last and first name.

If a direct translation is available, it is also sometimes adopted, e.g. a German or Dutch family name Gelder/Gelders becomes 钱.

My guess is, your last name's initial syllable sounds like 唐 and your first name's initial syllable sounds like 丁.


Edit: Just to clarify, Geld in German means money.


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## 123xyz

> Is there another person whose name is 唐甲 or 唐乙?
> 
> 唐 is a very common family name in China. 丁 means fourth or an adult male.



Why would there be other persons with those names? Because the 唐 "甲" and "乙" mean "first" and "second" respectively? To my knowledge there aren't, i.e. I'm not the "fourth 唐" in the class, or something such. 
Anyway, is 唐 just a name? It doesn't have any meaning as a regular word? It's only 丁 in my name that has such a meaning?




> My guess is, your last name's initial syllable sounds like 唐 and your first name's initial syllable sounds like 丁.



I don't see how this could be so - my first name is "Martin" and my last name is "Trpovski". Neither sounds even remotely similar to either "唐" or "丁", as far as I'm concerned. I think that our names have been assigned randomly. Then again, before assigning them, the teacher asked us to pronounce our names and then sat down to think for a while before figuring out what to call us, so there might be something to it. 

Either way, thank you for the replies.


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## Razzle Storm

Like retrogradedwiththewind mentioned, 唐 is a common family name in China. As for the 丁, the closest thing I can see in your name is the final "tin" sound of "Martin". Sometimes teachers don't have a lot to work with. Back in the day, my teacher used the first letter of my last name and first letter of my first name to give me my Chinese name (吴钧). Your teacher likely wanted to do something similar (T became 唐), but there's really not a lot of good M characters in Mandarin that work as a given name, so they had to go with the last sound in your first name, instad.


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## SuperXW

123xyz said:


> I don't see how this could be so - my first name is "Martin" and my last name is "Trpovski". Neither sounds even remotely similar to either "唐" or "丁", as far as I'm concerned.


We Chinese do not give names "randomly". Every character must have some reasons. 
Knowing your real name, now it's quite clear why your Chinese teacher named you 唐丁. Because your family name started with T (the most common "T" sound family name in Chinese is 唐 Tang), and the last part of your given name is "Tin" (which sounds like 丁), just as Razzal Storm has explained.
After all, not many Chinese know how to pronounce Trpovski correctly. Even if they know, it's impossible to find a normal Chinese name "sounds" just like it. Then a T-sound Chinese family name was chosen instead, just like that.
Don't worry, both characters are common for a name. There won't be any bad or strange association with the characters.


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## retrogradedwithwind

You seem to worry that 唐丁 is a strange name. No, it is a common name. Nobody would see It as bizarre.

If nobody in your class is named 唐甲唐乙，then your name could not mean the fourth 唐。Since you had mentioned that 丁 means the fourth, I asked if there is a person called 唐甲. For a Chinese, the first meaning of 丁– what comes into one's head at the very first -  is not the forth, or at least not only the fourth but also an adult man. These meanings 男丁，丁壮，丁姓 etc. comes, at least, not later than 第四 into one's head.

唐丁 is a common name, all in all.


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## 123xyz

All right, thank you. By the way, it's quite interesting that my Chinese name is actually meant to approximate my real name phonetically - I never would have perceived the connection myself.


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## Skatinginbc

123xyz said:


> I never would have perceived the connection myself.


I wouldn't, either.  I think 唐丁  violates Chinese transliteration conventions in two grounds: (1) /tr/ (as in _Trpovski_)  is transliterated with a denti-alveolar stop (/tʰ/ in 唐) rather than a  retroflex (e.g., /ʈ͡ʂ/ or /ʈ͡ʂʰ/); (2) the stressed syllable (i.e., _mar_- in _Martin_) rather than the unstressed one (i.e., -_tin _丁 in _Martin_) is discarded in transliteration.  I would have come up with something like 卓馬騰 as a transliteration for _Martin Trpovski_.


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## SuperXW

Skatinginbc said:


> I wouldn't, either.  I think 唐丁  violates Chinese transliteration conventions in two grounds: (1) /tr/ (as in _Trpovski_)  is transliterated with a denti-alveolar stop (/tʰ/ in 唐) rather than a  retroflex (e.g., /ʈ͡ʂ/ or /ʈ͡ʂʰ/); (2) the stressed syllable (i.e., _mar_- in _Martin_) rather than the unstressed one (i.e., -_tin _丁 in _Martin_) is discarded in transliteration.  I would have come up with something like 卓馬騰 as a transliteration for _Martin Trpovski_.


I perceived the connection easily. You version is no doubt theoretically better , but his teacher just came up with that translation on the spot. As I said, many people don't know the name Trposki. It's common they just focus on the first letter when facing an unfamiliar word. Then, Martin is commonly translated as 马丁. It no longer matters which one is stressed. The teacher could just omit 马(Mar-) because he didn't want to call 唐马丁 which doesn't sound like a Chinese name, or, he wanted to make it shorter. 
After all, when anyone is facing an unfamiliar term, it's common for them to focus on the first and the last part, I think.


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## 123xyz

> (1) /tr/ (as in _Trpovski_) is transliterated with a denti-alveolar stop (/tʰ/ in 唐) rather than a retroflex (e.g., /ʈ͡ʂ/ or /ʈ͡ʂʰ/)



Do you think that this might have something to do with the fact that the "r" in "Trpovski" is actually syllabic, i.e. that it's not pronounced in sequence with the "t" as a two-part consonant cluster but is preceded by a schwa-like sound, technically leaving the "t" alone at the beginning of my surname?



> As I said, many people don't know the name Trposki.



Trpo*v*ski . The lack or presence of a "v" before the "-ski" in surnames suffix is actually often an issue here - when being asked their surname, people are often also asked "With "v" or without?", as many surnames have both forms.


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## Youngfun

I think for the Chinese ears "tr" sounds closer to the retroflex palatized consonant  /ʈ͡ʂ/ or /ʈ͡ʂʰ/ (one syllable) than to "te re" (two syllable). This is similar to the English "tr" that is often pronounced similar to "chr".

Anyway, Westeners finding a Chinese names don't follow strict rules. In fact, some of them don't even phonetically transliterate their native name.
I know a guy names Andrej Shü-something who did a thing similar to you,  who chose his Chinese name as 许德烈 instead of 许安德。 I think these people prefer to cut the first syllable of the name (occupied by the Chinese surname) so that the overall syllables counts is the same as the Western name, and gives the illusion of having finished saying it (because the final part sound the same).


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## alexmaowei

Youngfun said:


> Anyway, Westeners finding a Chinese names don't follow strict rules. In fact, some of them don't even phonetically transliterate their native name.


是的。比如乌克兰驻华公使Vasyl Hamyanin/Vasily Gamyanin（瓦西里·哈米亚宁），中文名是“夏光”，这读音和他姓名的任何一个音节都不像，顶多ha和夏有点像。此外，他的姓名，无论在俄语还是乌克兰语中，都没有summer和light的意思。


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