# Ekin



## Chazzwozzer

Hi,

My name is Ekin and so is an actor from Hong Kong too! Can you tell me if it means culture/crop just like in Turkish or is it completely something different? How do you write and pronounce it? Is this a common name? For which sex is it used, it's unisex in Turkish.


----------



## Whodunit

I would write it like this:

*阿沁*
e1 qin4

I'm pretty sure the first syllable is correct, but I don't like the second character, because "kin" doesn't exist in Chinese. Furthermore, I wasn't sure about which tone they'd use for the second syllable.

Ekin Cheng (鄭伊健) is translated into Chinese as zheng4 yi1 jian4. Zheng4 and yi1 are just surnames. Don't ask me why the yi1 is used there; it can also mean "he" or "she." Jian4 means "healthy," and seems to be some representation of "ekin," which I am not sure about, though.


----------



## Flaminius

Whodunit said:


> Ekin Cheng (鄭伊健) is translated into Chinese as zheng4 yi1 jian4. Zheng4 and yi1 are just surnames.


 The family name of 鄭伊健 is 鄭 and his given name is 伊健.  The name is read in Cantonese (as he is from Hongkong) as Cheng Yee-Kin.  His English name is Ekin Cheng, where Ekin is taken from his Chinese given name.

It seems from the Wiki article *Chazzwozzer *has quoted that his official name is Ekin Cheng Yee-Kin, concatenating his English given name, family name and Cantonese given name.


----------



## Chazzwozzer

So Ekin is what we get when we Romanize his Chinese name, right? Hmm... I thought Chinese would have ekin as well, because this is one of those ancient words we have in Turkish and you know our history with Chinese.

Thank you both.


----------



## Flaminius

Chazzwozzer said:


> So Ekin is what we get when we Romanize his Chinese name, right? Hmm... I thought Chinese would have ekin as well, because this is one of those ancient words we have in Turkish and you know our history with Chinese.
> 
> Thank you both.



More accurately, Ekin is the Anglicised form of his name.  Yee-Kin seems to be the transcription (Romanisation) he has chosen for his name 伊健.  I cannot think of any Chinese word which means culture/crop and whose pronunciation is similar to "Ekin" by the way.


----------



## Chazzwozzer

_Russian _Piotr*=>Peter*_Greek _Giorgos*=>George*

Now it's what I know Anglicisation is. We simply make non-English words English. Am I right here? So, if Ekin is the Anglicised form of his name, then does it necessarily mean that ekin is already used in English as in Peter and George examples? Seems like I'm missing a point here.


----------



## Flaminius

I wrote _Anglicised_ simply to mean that the spelling is modified to conform to the conventions of English language.  Ekin, taken as an English word, is likely to be pronounced as [i:kin], not as [ekin].  This makes Ekin a good English-looking substitute for Yee-Kin, or so it seems to me.


----------



## Aoyama

All of the above is true. One little reminder :* qin* in chinese (mandarin) is pronounced like *chin* in english (what is below one's mouth), never like *kin* . When it comes to cantonese, it may well be that *Kin* = *kin*, I don't know.
伊 is a common phonetic character used to render Italy (伊大利） an other country names starting with *I* (*Yi*). Cantonese *Yee* sounds different from from turkish *E *which could be something close to french *é* , a mere guess.


----------



## MingRaymond

Aoyama said:


> All of the above is true. One little reminder :* qin* in chinese (mandarin) is pronounced like *chin* in english (what is below one's mouth), never like *kin* . When it comes to cantonese, it may well be that *Kin* = *kin*, I don't know.
> 伊 is a common phonetic character used to render Italy (伊大利） an other country names starting with *I* (*Yi*). Cantonese *Yee* sounds different from from turkish *E *which could be something close to french *é* , a mere guess.


 
Hello Aoyama,

伊 is used in country names such as Iran(伊朗), Iraq(伊拉克)，Italy is 意大利(Mainland China and Hong Kong) or 義大利(Taiwan). 

Ming


----------



## Aoyama

Right, my mistake, 伊大利 (or 伊大利 屋) is in japanese ... *I* can be tricky, Israel becomes 以色列... Still, 伊 has given イ　(I/i) in katakana.


----------



## Aoyama

In fact, it is 伊太利　（太, not 大), pronounced I Ta Ria in japanese ...


----------



## Flaminius

Dear all contributors to this thread,

After much thought and consideration, I decided to close this "Ekin" thread.

The reason is simple. The last few posts have become off-topic wanderings and misunderstandings; there is too much packed into one thread, and I doubt that continuing the thread will be of any use to future visitors to the forum.

If there are any remaining points to be made concerning the questions asked in the initial post, please let me know in PM.

Thank you for understanding.
Flaminius
Other Language moderator


----------

