Want to write name in Chinese? Let's do it!

When say "write name in Chinese", I do not mean to write sound-imitating names in Chinese symbols, but to write a native-like Chinese name. If you have not got one yet, you can see this page on how to get a good Chinese name.

Know the stroke order of your name

Chinese character strokes need to be written in the correct order. Although the final character you see is the same character in whatever stroke-order you write, it won't be easy for you to write it beautifully if your stroke order is wrong. So the Chinese writing's stroke order has become an integral part of the language.

There is an online tool Animated Chinese Characters to show characters' stroke-order.

In this tool, you need to input the Chinese characters of your name, one each time, into the search box. Please follow these steps:

1. You have to know the pinyin of your name's each character. You can get the pinyin from your Chinese friends or by looking up a dictionary.
2. Go to this online dictionary.
3. Input the pinyin into the first search box in the web page, and select "Pinyin" in the second box. Press the "Enter" key.
4. Now you will see a list of characters of the same pinyin. Find the Chinese character you want.
5. Select the Chinese character using your mouse and press Ctrl-C key to copy it to clipboard.
6. Go to the Animated Chinese Characters, click the search box in the page, press Ctrl-V to paste the Chinese character into the search box. Click the "Search" button.
7. Click the Chinese character in the search result and you will see the animated stroke sequential order.

However, the database of the animated characters does not include all Chinese characters. It might not include every character of your name. If so you may either ask your Chinese friends for help or you can divide the character into several parts and figure out the sequential order of each part separately.

Now you know the stroke orders, you can just go ahead and write name in Chinese.

Practice writing Chinese characters

Chinese writing is a kind of art. Handwriting is totally different from printer printing or screen display. During the moving of a single stroke, the force that the hand put on the pen changes all the way from the beginning to middle to the end.

From a person's handwriting of characters, we can also see the person's character. More importantly, you are going to write name in Chinese! So we must take it seriously.

Chinese writing needs long time practicing. In my primary school education, my Chinese language teacher put a lot of emphasis in handwriting training all through the years, which I feel very grateful today. Writing Chinese characters will also help you to remember the characters. So it deserves investing time to do the writing exercises.

However, no need to panic. You can also take sporadic time to do it. Even just write a few characters each time. And then compare with the sample calligraphy copybook to see where to improve. If you can find a little time to do so everyday, you will find tremendous improvement in your Chinese writing after a year.

Steps of practicing Chinese writing:

1. individual strokes Chinese writing training starts with practicing the simplest individual strokes, which include point stroke, horizontal stroke, vertical stroke, down-left curved stroke, down-right curved stroke, right-angle stroke, hook stroke.
2. Simple characters and individual radicals Like 上, 下,口,大,小,永 etc.
3. Complex characters
4. write a line of characters, then a page of characters

Trace-over exercise

This kind of exercise means to put semi-transparent paper on a calligraphy copybook, and write on the paper with pen by precisely following the strokes of model characters seen through the semi-transparent paper.

At the beginning of practicing Chinese writing, this kind of exercise can help you to imitate the shapes of Chinese characters quickly. At advanced level writing training, tracing-over exercise can also be used to improve the arranging of relative positions of character parts.

However, tracing-over exercise is not helpful in improving the hand's manipulating of pen. And it restricts your confidence in writing. So you can just proceed to writing on non-transparent paper when you feel you have grasped the shape of the model characters.

Importance of Chinese writing

After learning to write name in Chinese, maybe you wish to write more characters.

Because Chinese language characters are symbols describing object shapes, its written form is more important than writing in western languages.

If you are studying Chinese language, writing can tremendously help you memorize Chinese characters and improve your Chinese reading. By practicing Chinese writing, you are really getting into the culture.

I often saw some western friends who study Chinese trying to memorize Chinese characters by reciting the pinyin marks. That is a wrong approach. The correct approach is to memorize characters by identifying their visual shapes. The majority of information of Chinese language is carried in its visual form.

Being a hieroglyphic language, Chinese writing and calligraphy holds an important position in the culture. In ancient China, good hand-writing was a basic skill for scholars. There were many well-achieved calligraphers. Chinese hand-writing was regarded as not only manifesting the writer's personal character, but also developing the person's character when practicing writing. After years of practicing writing, one day when you write name in Chinese beautifully and confidently, you will find yourself have got changed during practicing writing Chinese.

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