Cantonese Name Generator

The written characters are usually identical; the difference is pronunciation and spelling. Cantonese is the language of Guangdong, Hong Kong and Macau, so names there are romanised from Cantonese sounds: 陳 becomes Chan instead of Chen, 李 stays Lee or Lei rather than Li, and 國強 becomes Kwok-keung rather than Guoqiang. Cantonese romanisation also keeps the two syllables of a given name separate with a hyphen or space.

No single standard was ever imposed. Hong Kong's informal government system gives Cheung, Leung and Kwok; Macau's Portuguese-influenced system gives Cheong, Leong and Kuok; and nineteenth- and twentieth-century immigration officials in the United States, Canada and Australia wrote down what they heard, producing Eng, Moy, Louie, Lum and Lowe. All of them are correct for the place and era they come from.

Surname first, then the given name, as in Chan Wai-kit, where Chan is the family name. In Western contexts many people reverse the order or add an English first name, so the same person may appear as Wai-kit Chan, Kenneth Chan or Kenneth Chan Wai-kit. On a Hong Kong or Macau identity card the Chinese order is always used.

They are built from genuine Cantonese surnames and common given-name characters, so they look and sound exactly like real names, but they are generated combinations rather than a list of specific people. Because the pool of common names is small, some will coincide with real individuals; check before using one for a named character in published work.