Chinese American Name Generator

A Chinese American name usually tells you when and from where a family arrived. The surname spelling is the biggest clue. Families from the 19th- and early 20th-century Cantonese and Toishanese migrations carry spellings fixed by immigration clerks: Wong, Louie, Chin, Moy, Eng, Hom, Toy, Gee, Lum, Yee, Quan, Jew, Dong. Hong Kong arrivals after 1965 use Cantonese romanizations like Chan, Cheung, Lau, Leung, Ng, Yip and Tsang; Taiwanese families use Wade-Giles (Hsu, Hsieh, Kuo, Chiang, Tsai, Chou); mainland immigrants since the 1980s use pinyin (Zhang, Liu, Zhao, Zhou, Xu, Zheng). The same family name, 陈, can appear as Chan, Chin, Chen or Tan depending on the route taken.

Given names follow generation. Immigrants often keep a Chinese given name (Wei, Ming, Mei-Ling, Kwok Wah) or adopt an English one at school or work. American-born children typically receive an English first name with a Chinese name as a middle name or used only at home: Grace Mei-Lin Wong, Kevin Wei Zhang. Certain English names were especially popular in Chinese American families in each era: Vivian, Connie, Irene and Wilson for boomers, Tiffany, Jason and Kevin for Gen X and millennials, Olivia, Ethan and Chloe today. Hyphenated surnames appear in mixed families.

The list mixes every layer so grandparents, parents and kids each sound right.