I teach English at a college in China and, more often than not, a student will have arrived at college already having chosen his or her English name. Often students want a name that sounds like or has the same meaning as their Chinese name. This often leads to names that don't sound so spectacular in English.
There is a lot of variety in Chinese given names and there is a strong emphasis on having a unique name. In a classroom in the English-speaking world, we often have multiple students named Jenny, John, Emily and Tim. This is much less common in China.
Recently, I had a student who chose for herself the "English" name of Alexankrapoo. After going to great lengths to explain why she shouldn't use this as her English name (nobody will understand it, you'll have to repeat it over and over, you don't want your name to contain the word 'poo' in it, etc.) she replied, "but it's unique!" Who can argue with that?
I have had quite a few chuckles over the years at some of these names. However, when I first chose a Chinese name for myself, it didn't turn out too well either. I chose one of the most common surnames "Zhang" (张）. Then, for my given name I decided to choose "Lang" (狼), which means wolf, because I thought it was cool and it was a common male name. When I started telling people my Chinese name, I got a lot of smiles and chuckles until finally one of my students told me, "That can't be your name! It's so bad!" Excitedly she opened the dictionary on her phone and said the word "Cockroach". Her pronunciation wasn't so great, so I took a look myself. Apparently, my surname and given name were just fine separately, but when combined, they sounded exactly like the Chinese word for cockroach. So here I was going around telling everyone that my name was cockroach. I soon asked a Chinese friend to choose a name for me, which I have stuck with since.
For your enjoyment, here is a list of names that some of my recent students have chosen for themselves. Enjoy and I dare you to try to keep a straight face!
Males:
Yaw
Jessesom
Tank
Jeam
Jackshon
Black
Shortcoming
Teemo
Females: (I have a lot more femal students)
Coco
Widy
Jhang
Painting
Adamyeah
Tidy
Suxi
Yoyo
Sikia
Hellbe
Bubble
Ejo
Just-in
Panny
Rainy
Lumia
Tiny
Luna
Miumiu
Niko
Limb
Shooting
Jury
Dobby
Yellow
Black (apparently this is gender neutral...see male names above)
Can
Barrel
Rainbow
Starry
Queenie
Leeway
Green
Kobe
Zero
Raevint
Momoko
Ear
