meaning of names in Chinese/Kanji/Hanja

[jefe]

You can PM me. I'll give it a shot.

Do you want URL's that can look up characters for you? Actually, any online language translator should be able to translate individual words.

[jefe]

Claudia,

I saw your PM, but I have a question.

Normally, we transliterate a name (from Korean, Chinese, Japanese, etc.) into latin letters based on the sound of the word (or according to some standard transliteration method). This presumes that the original name already exists in the original language and characters for that name have already been determined.

I had thought that you already had a Korean name in Chinese characters, but you were not sure of the meaning of those characters.

On the other hand, a WESTERN or non-East Asian name which does not have a corresponding representation in Chinese characters, can be transliterated into Chinese characters in various ways, usually based on the phonetic sound (but in other ways as well).

This does not apply to the name Kyu-ree, as, presumably, this name already had a Korean origin written in Chinese characters.

According to your PM, it seems that you want us to treat "Kyu-ree" as a non-Asian name, and transliterate it back into Chinese characters with Korean pronunciation. This is quite unusual, if not bizarre. Are you saying that Kyu-ree was never originally a Korean name with a Chinese character representation, or perhaps you are saying that it should have had a Chinese character form, but you simply do not know what it is and are tying to find combinations of Chinese characters that would fit the Korean pronunication?

If it is the latter, then it is very difficult, as so many characters could be chosen to satisfy that, all equally plausible. We might arbitrarily pick one (or at best, pick one that sounds nice) but it still might be entirely different from your original name.

You have no idea about your Korean name, besides what it sounds like? Even so, there must already be an existing Chinese character representation, even if you do not know what it is, and anything we pick is likely to be wrong. Can you ask a relative?

Of course, once you know the characters, we can help explain the meaning to you.

[helles]

well, i've never seen that first character you've used, but the second character for sure wouldnt be used in a name. for the same 'sound' you'd probably be best to use 莉 (li/lei)　or 丽 (li/lai) [pronunciation in mandarin/cantonese] to be more feminine.

[Aiko]

Kyuree I'll help you! PM me.

[Aiko]

Usually, Korean names come with their own meaning which can be represented by Chinese characters, or hanja. For example, my friend's name is "Hwa-Il" in which:
"Hwa" = harmony
"Il" = one

Or just "harmonious."

[helix]

kyuree said:

Are there any rules how to construct a name w/ Chinese characters?
I'm currently finding out the several meanings for 'kyu' and 'ree' but can I just 'randomly' put two meanings together or are there any special rules??

no, you can't just randomly legoblock characters together...not in japanese anyway. i'll try and get back to you on this.