Newbie - What's Your Surname?

I have a question about addressing someone older than me. I'm meeting up with an older couple when I visit Shanghai soon, and would like to know how to properly greet them. If the man's surname is X, do I simply call him X 先生, and his wife X 太太? Thanks.

Note: These people are NOT related to me. They are actually my wife's brother's fiancee's parents (that's 4 degrees of separation), so I just treat them as friends.

@alexyzye, it's better and common to address them 叔叔shū shu，阿姨 ā yí, just to show some respect. One thing, even if these senior people are not related to you, you still need to call them 叔叔shū shu and 阿姨 ā yí, literally uncle and aunt in English.

alexyzye,

I might start with X先生 and X太太, then ask 我该怎样称呼你?  Wǒ gāi zěn yàng chēng hū nǐ? I should how address you? Maybe with an apology for not knowing the proper address, which could be a nice icebreaker even if you do know the correct words. 

Have fun on your trip! I am so jealous... 

alexyzye,

I might start with X先生 and X太太, then ask 我该怎样称呼你?  Wǒ gāi zěn yàng chēng hū nǐ? I should how address you? Maybe with an apology for not knowing the proper address, which could be a nice icebreaker even if you do know the correct words. 

Have fun on your trip! I am so jealous... 

Or, you know, just listen to shenyajin.  I actually have a similar question, now that I think of it... Would you address a much older person as 爷爷 or 奶奶 if you have just met them?  It seems so informal and familiar to my western brain.

shenyajin,

What if addressing complete strangers?  Would I address them as 叔叔 and 阿姨, or would 先生 and 太太 be more appropriate in that instance?

As orangina says, it seems too informal to use 'uncle' and 'aunt' for strangers.  In alexyzye's case, he's being introduced through his in-laws so the couple wouldn't be complete strangers.

Back to the main theme of this lesson, what is the point then of telling people your surname anyway, if younger people call you 叔叔/阿姨, and older/same age people call you by your given name.

It looks like surname is only used in the form of X 先生/经理/etc in a business or professional setting.

And I prefer not to refer to someone as 爷爷 or 奶奶, because they might think I think they're old.

Note: Why is the CPOD text editing a bit screwy today?

@xueny, if they are complete strangers, say,  middled aged men and senior men we'll address them shīfu 师傅 or 先生 xiānsheng，but for young man, of course 先生 xiānsheng. For ladies, 小姐xiǎojie is the word for young ladies, and 女士 nǚshì or 阿姨 āyí for middled aged! There is a trend not to address senior women 奶奶 nǎinai，pls do call them 阿姨 āyí，or they'll be really, really unhappy!

@alexyzye, I checked and found nothing wrong with the text! Could you pls tell me why it's screwy? I'm curious! And it's a part of Chinese culture not to ask others "what's your name" or "May I have your name?" It's a little bit not so polite to ask somebody's full name. So we'll just ask "您贵姓?" What's your surname?

谢谢 shenyajin!  Very helpful.

As to why ask for their surname at all, I usually use the names and titles in conjunction: 王先生， 王阿姨。 

@orangina, it's a good idea to start with X先生 and X太太, then ask 我该怎样称呼你? natural and polite!

thanks! now if I could just remember to say it when I need it and not just when I am sitting in front of my computer! ;-）

@shenyajin

A couple of hours ago, the site was very sluggish (at least on my end). I think this was screwing up my text edits, and I had to reedit several times. Everything is fine now though.

Thanks for the explanation about names.

I remember this excellent Qing Wen lesson where they explain how to address people in Chinese:

 http://chinesepod.com/lessons/addressing-people

关于老男人，我可不可以叫不熟悉的老男人‘大爷’？

(Can I call older men who I am not familiar with 'dàyé'?)

@xiaophil, yes, of course, but I think it's a regional addressing, mainly in northern area of China.

Hello Poddies,

Interesting lesson, particularly the use of:

qǐngwèn, nín guì xìng?

showing perhaps the cultural difference and the emphasis on respect and politeness in the Chinese culture; in the US it was difficult to even get a Mister in front of my surname.  heh

Anyway, for the newbies, I am thinking back a little and there is a lesson on tones generally and the second tone in particular.    The second tone can be approximated by using an English question tone something like "Wang?"

Also, from learning Spanish in my early years I found that I was too analytical and that created a kind of paralysis in my learning.  Hence the teaching: "The paralysis of analysis."

So being overly analytic can be a real learning block at least for me and learning "chunks" of language as Ken said is a good way to go for me.

On the other hand, because of language structure, well there is a balance here too.  And learning the structure of the language is important; ie patterns a la John.

If I am going to err as a new learner I will err on the side of chunks.  hehe...sounds disgusting,but serously is a great way to learn the Chinese language.

By analyzing the "gui" some added learning occurred in terms of cultural understanding.  This is just my experience.  I could be wrong.

Thanks for all the hard work you guys do.

我性许，言午许。我叫尘，小土尘。

please help me!

I have a question.

任何事情总有第一次  translation

1. there is a first for evetything.

2.there is firsts for evetything.

（gossip girls’sentence）

3.there are firsts for evetything.

which one is a correct explanation？

@xuchen, 你应该说：我姓许。我想知道你为什么叫这个名字啊？

for most offical situation , we may ask each other only the surnames , for example

-您好，请问您贵姓？ nín hǎo,qǐng wèn nín guì xìng?

-免贵姓陈。            miǎn guì xìng chén.

-哦，陈小姐，……    o,chén xiǎo jiě.......

in the expression above we used "贵" to describe the surname whose you are talking to .

The literal meaning of "贵" here is 'honorable'."请问您贵姓" is a formal way to ask for a (partial) name ,on the other side ,"免贵" reflects a feeling of humility.

I want to know , how we call 'Pakistan'

like Riben  = japan

Hi chwaseef

Pakistan is 巴基斯坦 ba1ji1si1tan3.

My Chinese sobriquet (阿麦 / Ā Mài) is an adpation of an unbearable transliteration of my English name.

The result is a little provincial (土/tǔ), but endearing (可爱/kěài).

I don't feel the need to have a full authentic Chinese name, I already have a perfectly good surname and first name in my mother tongue.

@alexye,

Your question made me think about where we draw the line for relatives. In China, the family is a big extended concept that includes people you will never meet. But as long as they are married into your family, that makes them related to you. For example, the old couple you mentioned, we'd consider them to be relatives and quite close ones. We also have gazillion terminologies to address a plethora of relatives.

shenyajin

cant you use 称 cheng1 to ask informaly someone's first name or nickname? Something like  他们称什么你? (what do they call you?). What would be the proper way to do this? 

I find my chinese surname amusing, 我姓欧. My full chinese name is 欧柔安 which I think is a pretty good approximation of my actual name, Reanne O'Sullivan.  

Doubt there are many other 欧 out there that I woud run into. I wonder if many other foreigners end up with strange surnames for their chinese names.

@xueny brought up a question regarding addressing a woman as 太太。 I have been told that, first, this is considered rude and, second, it is usually reserved as a form of address to one's wife.  Is this correct?  I commonly address men as 先生 sometimes when, for example, asking for directions.  Nobody's gotten offended, though they might be just making allowances.

In some situations, for example at an English corner, if I am talking to a young lady, I encourage her to call me 爷爷, 叔叔，or something along those lines.  It seems to establish a "boundary," that makes conversation more comfortable.  However, that's totally instinctive on my part, so I'm not sure if my reasoning is correct.

这个课很有用的,好像我的第一次中文课. (我写对了吗?有没有语法错误吗?)

没错，你写的很对，第一次换成第一节更好。

------tvan says
10 hours ago

@xueny brought up a question regarding addressing a woman as 太太。 I have been told that, first, this is considered rude ...      

 ————It is absolutely not rude,but it can be used depends on situation. 太太 is a bit formal if you used in modern day and it's actually more popular used in the early 20 centry in China to call the wife of some rich people。 so, if you wanna call a lady respectively which is a friend or ralative, you can call her (surname) +(aunt or sister), it depends on the age.   Besides, you can call her as your wife or friends do who is the relative of her, like 姑姑（sister of father），姨（sister of mother）etc. Although you are not the real relatives. Take yours for instance——These people are NOT related to me. They are actually my wife's brother's fiancee's parents (that's 4 degrees of separation), so I just treat them as friends.——in China， we don't call people only depending on their age but the 辈分（position in the family hierarchy maybe）like a grandpa has the same  辈分  with grandma ，that is to say  because it is the fiancee's parent which is the same 辈分with your wife and her brother’s parents， and you are equal to your wife‘s 辈分，that means they have the same 辈分 as your parents in-law。（your parents、yourwife's parents and the fiancee's parents are the same position in family herarch）so you should call them 叔叔（uncle）阿姨，which sound much more like a family member in future。 If you use 先生 or 太太， it likes a stranger speaking which more common in offical situation. 

I don't know if I explain it clearly, if you guys have  any questions about Chinese please contact me with msn Shiligs@hotmail.com. It is my pleasure to answer as long as I know. 

A good one I learned the other day:

Guìguó shì nǎguó?

(Which country is your honorable country?)

By the way, I just noticed guì (贵) also means expensive so it's like asking "what is your highly valuable/esteemed surname/country?" ^_^

Two more countries into the mix, both their cuisines are awesome:

Tàiguó - Thailand

Yuènán - Vietnam

This little lesson makes me smile. Long time ago, I learned 您贵姓。。。but I forgotten. That was my first year of learning Chinese. 2 years later, when working as an interpreter I heard this question from one of the Chinese businessman for the first time in my live not from a textbook, but from real person! And I had problems with answering, that's called 真丢脸，真丢脸*! 

我姓李**,叫吉***。

*zhen1diu1lian3 - really loose face (literally)

** this character is li2

this character is ji2, but in our local Hangzhou dialect it's jie2 :)) 

am a begginer of chinese language,i find it difficult to comprehend.how simple do u thinh i can understand it very fast,moreover,the pinyi righting its diddicult to recognise the carry too many reseblance

Thanks shenyajin and shiligs for your feedback.  Very helpful.

By the way, I would never call an older woman 奶奶 (nǎinai).  I live in New York City and can only imagine the reaction if I went up to a senior citizen here and said, "Can I ask you a question, grandma?"  At best, I'd get off with only a stern look.  More likely there'd be some choice words, and maybe something thrown at me. And if there were a son or grandson with her, I'd be off and running faster than The Menu Stealer.  :)

我姓何   名咏雪

中国的名字含有意思的哦

@xueny,That's the difference between Eastern and Western cultures.

To call a older woman 奶奶 is a kind of polite and close behavior in China.

@xueny,people also can use "阿婆"(a po2) instead of "奶奶".

In fact, "阿婆" is used more widely in China when u call a strange older woman who seems at least 65 yars old.

If she is a middle-ager, "阿姨" is ok~

我是中国人，有谁是纽约的呢，我们现在是白天，你们那里一定是晚上咯

is the use of 美女 to young ladies considered flirting or a derogatory remark? Perhaps a compliment also for women past middle age?

dawg888:

美女 is a compliment for young ladies.You can say:
你姐姐真是个美女。
Nǐ jiějie zhēn shì ge měinǚ！
You aslo can use 美女 to address your friends.For example:
美女，最近忙吗？
Měinǚ， zuìjìn máng ma？
But a stranger use 美女 is considered flirting or a derogatory remark. For example:
美女，喝一杯！
Měinǚ，hē yī bēi！