chinese first/ surnames

[mollykins]

i noticed that in the olympics, in a starting list most people had their names Bodie MILLER, but the chinese had theirs like ZENG Lee.

Is Zeng his family name?
Do all chinese people write their name like that?
Would his friends call him Lee of Zeng? of course with family he'd be called Lee (assuming Zeng is the family name as its in capitals)
Say an english person married a chinese person, say Lilly Miller and Zeng Lee, would her name become Zeng Lilly or Lilly Zeng?

[redman41]

Family names come first in China, the opposite of Western ones.
Zeng is the Family name.
As far as I know Chinese Women tend to keep their Family name when they marry, but don't quote me on that.

[heathfield]

Family name first is the custom in China. But many Chinese outside China are taking up the Western way of family name last. This makes for confusion as to which of their names is the family name. They get around this by addressing someone called 'John Smith' as 'Mr John', or 'Zeng Lee' as 'Mr Zeng'. It's polite, and universally accepted.

[mollykins]

so what about a western woman, who would normally take up their husbands name? Lilly Zeng?

[society]

Is the husband called Lilly Zeng? If so then she would be 'Wife Lilly Zeng'.

[mollykins]

i was jsut using lily Miller and Lee Zeng as examples.

[McMouse]

Heard about a chinese couple whose baby was born with a small head. They called him Sum Ting Wong.

[marval]

I knew a man called Kerr who married a Chinese girl called Wang.

[marval]

Three Chinese brothers, Bu, Chu, and Fu, want to illegally live in America.

The brothers decide to change their names to seem American.

Bu changes his name to Buck.

Chu changes his name to Chuck.

And Fu got sent back to China.

[abstibus]

Perhaps this answer is not really relevant to your question, but I thought it might interest you.

I work a lot with Chinese students at university level, and the question of citation/referencing is very difficult for them, as they find it hard to distinguish between western 'family' names and 'given' names.

For example, if a book is written by John Smith, I often find the author cited as 'John'.
Western students have the same problem in reverse: if the author's name is Zheng Li, then I get the reference as 'Li'.

You can imagine the fun we have trying to get it right!
It's no wonder my hair is going grey fast.

[mollykins]

doesn't really answer my question but its an intresting story.

what subject did you teach annemollie?

[Beswad]

@redman41

You're quite right there, Chinese women when married prefer to keep her surname and living in the West they get offended when being address as Mr and Mrs X, reason being, they see as incestrous.