Read the birth chart · choose the character
A Chinese name,
chosen on purpose
Most name lists give you a hundred options and no reasons. This one starts from the surname and the birth time, and shows the work behind every name it suggests.
Four tools
How a name gets chosen
Chinese naming is not a lookup. The same two characters can be excellent behind one surname and awkward behind another, because the surname's tone and final decide how the whole name sounds. So the tool works in this order:
- Read the chart first. The birth time is converted to True Solar Time using the longitude of the birthplace — Beijing time is a single zone stretched across five, so an uncorrected clock can be off by over an hour near the edges.
- Filter the character pool. The dictionary holds 9,721 characters used in names, each with pinyin, meaning, style tags and an element. Characters whose element clashes with the chart are removed first, then the pool is narrowed by style.
- Reject what sounds bad. Tone contour, repeated initials and colliding finals are checked across the full name, surname included. This is where most machine-generated names fail.
- Look for a real source. Candidates are checked against 8 classical works and 14 chapter groups, and only names with an actual line behind them survive.
The same input always produces the same output. Nothing is generated by a language model, so a result you saw last week can be reproduced and checked.
Guides in English
Four long-form guides written for readers who do not read Chinese. They draw on the same data as the Chinese articles — a 9,721-character naming lexicon, 109 surname histories and 316 names with a traceable source line — and say where each claim comes from.
These four are written in English. The full source library — nine classical-source pages, 109 surname histories and the naming-principles essay — is still written in Chinese; links to it are listed below.
Frequently asked questions
Is it free?
Yes. All four tools are free, with no account, no sign-up and no daily limit. The site is funded by advertising.
Where do the names come from?
A built-in dictionary of 9,721 characters, filtered by element, style, sound and finally by whether a classical source actually contains the phrase. The rules run in your browser, so the same input gives the same names every time.
Does my birth information get uploaded?
No. The chart and the naming run entirely in your browser. Birth details never reach a server, and saved names stay in your own device's storage.
Is any of this predictive?
No. The calendar and the character meanings are real; the judgements built on top of them — favourable elements, scores, compatibility — are folk tradition, offered as cultural reference and entertainment. We do not forecast anyone's future and we say so on every result page.
Do you have guides in English?
Yes. Four are published: how Chinese names work, names drawn from classical poetry, Chinese surnames and their origins and 2026 Year of the Horse names. They are collected in the Guides in English section above. The deeper per-source articles — eight classics, 109 surname histories, registration rules and name collisions — are still written in Chinese.
If you want to read further
Start with the four English guides above. The full source library behind the tools is written in Chinese, with sources cited for every claim. These are the places to go deeper:
For how the site is run, see about, privacy and disclaimer.