• Languages

  Mandarin Help

  Posted by Lazarus Black on March 3, 2020 at 9:00 am

  Hi.

  I’m looking for a little help with some character names/titles in Mandarin for an Urban Fantasy piece.

  Example: Based on what I’ve learned about, there are a lot more homonyms in Mandarin than in English and context is important.

  I have a character I want to name Chen Běn Qi with an English name of “Benji”. Now Běn has a number of meanings or at least one round-about-meaning that could go really well with Qi (which seems to only have one) as a cool compound. However, I can’t confirm that any of those preferred meanings are used commonly enough to make sense in context.

  According to one Mandarin Dictionary:

  本 běn
  Means: roots, origin, source, the current, root, foundation

  I am hoping that “Běn Qi” can mean something like “Qi Source” or “Founded in Qi” so I can use “Benji” as an abbreviation by other non-Chinese characters.

  Is this possible? Does it make sense? Is it offensive or wrong in any way?

  Thank you in advance for any help you might give.

  Lazarus Black replied 6 years, 6 months ago 1 Member · 0 Replies

  • Mandarin
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