Re:Foreign Minister Taro Kono to ask media to switch order o...
by klodolph on Tuesday May 21, 2019 @04:20PM
(#19974475)
I was thinking of the context where you are talking to someone in English, but they have a Chinese name. In Chinese I assume it would be much less ambiguous how to address someone with a Chinese name.
In my experience, while it is common for a Chinese personal name to be one syllable, it's not at all common for a person to be addressed by that one-syllable name. There are several strategies:
1. A person with a one-syllable name might be addressed by their whole name. For example, a 孙艺 might be called 孙艺 in speech, even though 孙 is the family name.
2. The person might have a nickname. For example, I know someone who goes by his nickname 哈哈; I've never heard his actual name.
3. The one-syllable name might be reduplicated; 袁璐 might be addressed as 璐璐.
4. The one-syllable name might be prefixed with 小; 李宁 might be addressed as 小宁.
Options 3 and 4 are diminutive constructions and may be too intimate for a strange man (or even a familiar man) to use to a woman.