Can somebody who is familiar with pinyin, help me with the English meaning of a Mandarin name?

Question

I am taking an elementary Mandarin Chinese Class, and my instructor gave us Chinese names. They all supposedly have meanings, but I would like to know the meaning of mine. In pinyin, my name is Wu, Aimei. Wu is second tone, Ai is fourth tone, and mei is second. I also have the simplified chinese characters for it, but I don't know how to display them here. Any ideas would be greatly appreciated!!

Answer 1

AspiringJ, your answer is wrong, second tone mei doesn't mean beautiful, third tone mei (美) does.

I'm warranting a guess at your wu = 吴. This is your last name. Chinese last names don't generally have meanings, unlike English last names which may be derived from professions eg Baker, Smith, Miller etc.

It's hard for us to tell you what your name means if you don't have the characters as each pronunciation has many different characters to it, each with their own meaning.

However here's a list of possibles...

4th tone ai:

爱 (most common) - love
嫒 - an uncommon word meaning daughter

2nd tone mei:

梅 - plum (can refer to the tree, or the flower - plum blossoms actually signify strength and determination)
眉 - eyebrow
玫 - rose (actually mei gui, 玫瑰)
莓 - berry (some berries, eg strawberry, cao mei 草莓)

Hope this helps.

EDIT: Da ben dan mentioned mei = 没, which means lack of or nothing but is not used in people's names. The name 'da ben dan' (大笨蛋) means great idiot btw.

Answer 2

wu....possibly(probably) has no meaning here--it's just a comon surname--but in the 2nd tone can mean nothing , no , or not.
ai(4) means to love or to be fond of
mei(2) means not or have not
but this is really difficult without the actual characters....you might ask your instructor what my name means (you wont need tones)

Answer 3

Ai means love. Mei means beauty. Therefore Aimei means loves to be beautiful. However, for surname if it's written as 无, then it means lack of. If it's written as another name, probably it means something else.

Answer 4

I would suggest you use your Yahoo search, type "meaning of Chinese names" and then + (the name you want).

Also try a translation program.

Answer 5

wu is a common chinese surname
as for your name, you could search at http://www.mandarintools.com
for each one.