Re: find out your name in chinese and japanese

On Feb 25, 5:31 pm, green_kni...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Catja
Pafort) wrote:
<CharlesRCap...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
The Kanji for a western name would be
boring and ugly to a native reader and you're more likely to get it
wrong anyway. Much better to go for a Kanji for some ideal that you
ascribe. Like peace or love or something. Those would be more ascetic
to those who read Kanji natively.

So far - although I didn't keep them, sigh, I've seen three different
attempts to turn my name into Kanji - *all completely different*.

I can't even find a definite version of 'Green Knight' which ought to be
reasonably straightforward.

I don't speak Chinese (any dialect), nor do I read it all that well.
What I know of Chinese comes from Japanese, since they use a large
number of the same common Kanji. However in Japanese at least, the
word for Green is the same as for Blue in so much that green is not a
primary color in old Japanese. (The word blue is 'aoi' in Japanese.
The prefix 'ao' which means blue and 'i' which means color. So red is
"akai' and yellow is 'kiiroi') This isn't all that surprising since
the human eye can discern more shades of blue than of any other color
and green is the most common shade of blue in the environment. (i.e.
Green is the combination of blue and yellow. While the other
combination of blue is with red producing purple, which is not as
common in the environment. So for a culture to consider blue and green
to be the same color is not too strange. However modern Japan does
differentiate between the colors now, they often use the word Buru
(Blue) to specify the blue color if they need to be specific that it
does not include the possibility of green.) (Green in old Japanese can
be referred to, but only as a subset of blue, for example vegetable
green is 'aoyasai'. (Note: Literally that is Blue Vegetable, but as we
know vegetables are green, so it is referring to a shade of green.)
More modern Japanese gives green a specific name, 'midori' but is not
considered a primary color, and is still considered a shade of blue.)

Again, speaking from the Japanese perspective, Knights are not native
to Asia. The concept of a Knight involves religious observance
(Christian) Chivalry (another non-native concept) as well as a
mounted, armored soldier. There are a number of ways you could try to
translate the word knight into Japanese, but none would be
satisfactory. You might be tempted to say that a Samurai is analogous
to a Knight, but this would be flawed. Samurai are not a religious
order, while they are armored in the Japanese fashion it is not really
the same as European armor, and while they were mounted once horses
were imported to Japan, they were originally foot soldiers. (If my
memory does not fail me.) Most importantly Bushido is in no way
analogous to Chivalry. If you try to compare the two you'll be making
a big mistake and a common one.

So in Japanese at least there is no definitive translation of Green
Knight. Which I suppose would provide similar problems in Chinese. If
you want to translate Green Knight into Japanese and leave no room for
misunderstanding you could try "Guriin Niito" (which most Japanese
would understand as the phonetic version of the English words Green
and Knight. Which 'Niito' is a common usage in Japanese spelled in
Katakana used in various RPGs.) or you could try "Midori Niito" which
would have the advantage of not using the less common phonetic version
of green that may not be as well understood. However neither has a
Kanji version that I know of. Either way, I feel the average Japanese
reader would think it a stupid thing to tattoo on your body. =)
.

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