Foreign Name

They are names of other nations adopted by the Chinese. They gave themselves a foreign name when they migrate to a foreign country as they need a name which is similar to their language for convenience purpose. They gave themselves foreign name too when they married a foreigner or when they are influenced by a foreign culture or religion, which is discuss in the religion section. The usual way of adopting a foreign name is to use a foreign name as the given name while retaining one's family name such as Michael Tan or Sheila Lin. There are even cases that a person has more than one foreign name, for example their whole name would be Ahmad Bin John Lee Boon Tek, where Ahmad Bin is a common name in Indonesia, Malaysia and Brunei, "John" a common name in the west, and "Lee Boon Tek" is the person's original Chinese Name

On the other hand, there are also foreigners who have adopted Chinese names. A well known example is Sir David Wilson whose Chinese name is Wei Yexin. Such foreigner adopted Chinese names to aid in his or her career or purposes, while others adopted such names because of their married spouse who is a Chinese. The other reason, though not so common now, is that the child of a foreigner and a Chinese adopted both a Chinese and foreign name in order to live and work easily in both places.