About
Where the name comes from
“Chinese Naming” takes its Chinese name from a line in Qu Yuan's Li Sao (third century BCE):
皇览揆余初度兮，肇锡余以嘉名。
“My father looked at my first bearing, and gave me a fine name.”
That is the whole idea of the site: a name is the first thing a family gives a child, and it is worth deliberating over.
Who runs this
This is a naming tool built on traditional Chinese practice — surname, birth time, calendar, element, and text from the classics — reconstructed as reproducible rules rather than left to taste alone.
It is an independent one-person project. One developer writes the content, compiles the data, builds the software and keeps it running. There is no company behind it, no editorial team and no outside contributors. Everything published under the site name is that one person's responsibility, which means mistakes can be found and fixed quickly, and also that updates arrive more slowly than a staffed site would manage.
What this site can and cannot tell you
The thing most easily misunderstood about a naming site: most of what it outputs is computed, not written. Those two kinds of content carry very different weight, and they should be read differently.
| Content | How it is produced | How to read it |
|---|---|---|
| Name suggestions, name scores | Generated by the built-in dictionary and scoring rules | An entertainment ranking, not an authoritative judgement |
| BaZi charts, element distribution | Computed from the sexagenary calendar | The calendar part can be recomputed; the “favourable element” reading is one school's opinion |
| Zodiac, shensha, five-grid numerology | Looked up in traditional rule tables | Folk systems with no scientific basis |
| Surname origins, commanderies, hall names | Compiled by hand from dynastic surname books and local gazetteers | Primary sources cited; competing accounts listed side by side |
| Pronunciation, homophone and character analysis | Written by hand | Experienced judgement, open to argument |
| Essays and surname guides | Written by hand, facts checked line by line | Sources noted in the text |
In short: the computed part is entertainment; the written part carries responsibility for being accurate. That is why every page that touches fortune, scoring or auspiciousness carries a disclaimer. It is not boilerplate — it is a request that you not treat program output as the basis for a child's name. Meaning, pronunciation and how the characters look when written matter more than any score.
How the content is produced, where AI tools were used and how to report an error are set out in the editorial policy (in Chinese), including the last-updated date for each section. Data handling is covered by the privacy policy, and the limits of our claims by the disclaimer.
The tools
| Page | What it does |
|---|---|
| Name generator | Surname plus birth details, then a filtered set of names with reasons |
| Name checker | Scores an existing name on meaning, sound, strokes and elements |
| BaZi chart | Four Pillars, element distribution and favourable-element notes |
| Two names together | How two names read side by side |
| Saved names | Keeps candidates on your own device |
| Contact | Corrections, suggestions and enquiries |
Technical notes
- True Solar Time correction. Birth time is corrected by the longitude of the birthplace, which is how traditional charts were cast.
- Place selection by level. More than 200 countries and territories; within mainland China down to province, city and district.
- Calendar data. Lunisolar calendar, solar terms and shensha tables are built in rather than fetched.
- Classical sources. Recommended characters are drawn from poetry and the classics, so a name can be traced back to a line.
Data and privacy
All naming, scoring and chart calculations run in your browser. Birth details are never uploaded, and saved names live in your own device's storage. Messages sent through the contact form do reach a server (hosted on Cloudflare, outside mainland China), are visible only to the site owner, and are deleted automatically after 180 days. See the privacy policy and disclaimer.
Contact
If something is wrong, or you want to suggest a feature, use the contact form. Messages go to the site owner only and are never published.