Chinese Name Generator
Generate authentic Chinese names for your fiction — given names with common Chinese surnames, for both contemporary and historical settings.
Generate Chinese Names
Click Generate to get your names.
Chinese names in fiction
Chinese names follow family name — given name order, with the family name (姓, xìng) first. Chinese family names are among the oldest personal surnames in the world; a relatively small number of surnames (about a hundred) are used by the vast majority of Chinese people, with Wang, Li, Zhang, Liu, and Chen being the most common.
Chinese given names are typically one or two characters, each with meaning. The name's meaning is usually chosen deliberately by parents and carries cultural, aspirational, or generational significance. A given name might reference virtues (wisdom, righteousness, loyalty), natural phenomena (flowers, mountains, rivers), or historical and literary allusions.
Regional and historical variation
Chinese names vary significantly by region and era. Cantonese romanisations (Chan, Cheung, Leung) differ from Mandarin Pinyin romanisations (Chen, Zhang, Liang) of the same characters. Hong Kong, Taiwan, and mainland China have different conventions. Historical names from imperial China follow different patterns from contemporary names. Knowing which context your characters inhabit will inform which naming conventions to follow.