Help with Chinese Names

You might find some of these links to be helpful. Part of my story is set in a similar region and I've made good use of these! (and a few other sites that help you 'test' out a name).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_surname
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_name
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/傑#Chinese

Unless you need names that have specific meanings, the easiest way is to head to Wikipedia, look up names in their Olympics/football(soccer) national teams, snatch a given name from one guy and the surname from another guy, and you've got a new name. It really doesn't matter if your guys are from Guangdong province or Hubei, their Romanized names are standardized. But if you are picky, you can look up their origins and choose only those from Guangdong.

Names are the easy part. How to portray them true to their culture is the hard part. What if you have a crime boss Wang Shikai from Guangzhou who behaves and talks like a replica of James Gandolfini?

Never hurts to have a good translation tool also. You should at least be aware of the differences between Mandarin and Cantonese, which are rendered differently in English even though they have the same characters in Chinese. There are also different Romanization methods. Pinyin is now the standard method, but older books used Wade-Giles, which could add to the confusion if you're not aware of the differences.

http://www.mandarintools.com/chardict.html

cmhbob said:

As I understand the naming conventions, my triad boss, his uncles, and his brother will all share the same surname, yes? Or should, anyway, assuming the uncles are on the paternal side?

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There are exceptions, but for the sake of simplicity: Yes, if they're all on the paternal side.

However, have you considered how each person is addressed? Especially in a Triad's structure? If not, I suggest researching that, too. You might find the search string "Forefathers Triad" helpful.

Most things have already been covered, but it's worth also noting generational names (which can be either the second or third character, but common to all of a couple's children, irrespective of gender, so need to be careful which phoneme to use), double-barrelled surnames (VERY rare nowadays, but can add a bit of quirkiness if you want), and one character given names (not so rare, but still uncommon, just excludes the generational name, but families with majority instances of three character names tend to stick to three, and a two character name may be indicative of adoption, rare though that may be, as well).

Also, are they also going to have English names, as many Chinese people have names used when they use English, whether they are directly analogous or just names pulled out of a hat. My niece was named deliberately in both English and Chinese to have meaningful names that sound similar in both languages (Cantonese in her case) and her surname was translated as well to add meaning. Further, it may be a point of importance among the characters to know how they're written in Chinese, should you wish to really get into it and know how Chinese people 'spell' their names to each other. But if you are going to use Cantonese or Mandarin pronunciations/conventions, stick to the one as it can be quite jarring to switch from one to the other (namely from given name to given name). My (albeit personal, as you may prefer how Cantonese sounds, which is fine as well) recommendation would be to use Mandarin, owing to tonal variety in Cantonese that can make it really weird to read in English without accents, Mandarin doesn't have this problem as much.

Incidentally, are you intending to write any Chinese dialogue in romanised English at all? Or is all dialogue tacitly understood to be in Chinese?

cmhbob said:

I'm still reading up on the various types of romanization and learning what I can both about the Triad culture and conventional culture. I used Bing's suggestion up above, but I've noticed that Wikipedia is rather hit-or-miss when it comes to romanization. Some people will have multiple versions of their name (traditional, simplified, pinyin) and others will have what looks like a straight English version without any diacritical markings. It's hard for an old Western guy wtih German roots to follow.

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No worries... it can get even more confusing when courtesy names get involved! Luckily, it's a very archaic practise and considered way too pretentious. If it helps, though, don't worry about accents/diacritical markings, just go without to prevent any confusion. Some readers will be familiar with such markings another language (indicating stress or formation of the vowel sound etc.), but the convention is quite different when considering Chinese (pitch-direction of the tone), so I think it would be safer to go without unless you can somehow educate the reader about the tones. Not sure how you feel about going into such depth...

Regarding the romanisation, it can be a bit tricky... a funny thing about the Far Eastern Sinosphere is that people can usually (if they're fluent in English) tell where another Chinese person is from (broadly, at least) from the way their name is romanised (like on a passport) e.g. the word 'thank' (xie4, which is a relatively common surname, incidentally): mainland China - Xie; Hong Kong/Guangdong - Tse; Taiwan - Hsieh, following, respectively, pinyin, Yale & Wade-Giles. So you can use this to the characters' benefit should you so wish.

I'm still very early in the first draft stages, so I'm not sure how the Chinese characters will appear, or even if they'll appear. I'm pretty sure whenever they're on screen, they'll be speaking English to most of the others, and Chinese to themselves. I'll probably italicize the Chinese portions.

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Yep, that works. I think you can use native expressions of endearment without it being a deal-breaker...

Out of interest, how 'stereotypically' Chinese do you want to make them (treading lightly around the usage of some rather unsavoury commonly heard phrases...)? Most commonly:
Gweilo.

cmhbob said:

Thanks for all of the advice!

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Yeh velkom!

Found one of the threads I was looking for: https://absolutewrite.com/forums/showthread.php?327217-General-Character-Concept-Sensitivity-Check

For Chinese characters specifically, see Posts 1, 2, 3, 5, and 6.