Chinese Names Are All The Same
I mentioned a while back in a China Ball column that the Chinese adopt Western names in order to ease relations with the Western world.  What I failed to mention is that, for the same reason, Westerners living in China all take Chinese names.  When I got here I was given the name "Da Wei", which is the direct translation of David in Chinese.  However, as any name composed of Chinese characters is, the name has a meaning.  Each sound in Chinese, in this case "Da" or "Wei" can be spoken using 4 different tones.  And depending on how the character is written, a sound matched with a tone can have multiple meanings.  I am certain that meaning of "Da" spoken in the the staccato 4^th tone, means "big".  However, the meaning of my second name, "wei" is questionable.  The character I use to spell my name means "protector" making my name in Chinese "big protector". But the sound "wei" spoken in the same tone can mean "stomach", "taste", "hedgehog" or numerous other things.  To make it clear, my name, spoken not written, is identical to "big stomach".  A Shanghai Daily article Thursday presents another major problem with the naming system in China.  Not only are names, such as mine, vague in meaning, but there simply are not enough unique names anymore in China to go around.  Many Chinese share the same spoken and written name and face constant identity difficulties at work, with paperwork and in communicating with the government.  The reason for this is three-fold.  First, the character pool used for Chinese names has diminished to 500 as opposed to the 3,000 name characters in Ancient China.  Second, the trend nowadays in China is to give your child only two names such as Yao Ming.  Before 1966, most people had 3-character names (Mao Zedong) and in Ancient China, 4-character names.  And last, the massive population of China has made unique naming nearly impossible.  As you can see from list of the most popular Chinese names, it's also nearly impossible to say any of these names.

•Shanghai Daily: Name Strain Now Worse