Introduction

I am Lixin Cao in Chinese Pinyin. I was finding a way to give myself an English name, then I found a post, How to choose an English name, which gives an useful method for choosing an English name, by which I made a program to help choose an English name.

You can try it here.

I will cover some detail of the post and the program in the below.

The post says

Do not try to be creative in picking an English name.

Avoid:

  • Do not try to pick a fun or cute-sounding name from a movie, television, or video game character
  • Do not pick a name that you think sounds cool or trendy, because Americans will think it sounds stupid
  • Do not pick a name because your friends think it sounds cute, because your friends are not the Americans you have to interact with in the future
  • Do not translate some positive-sounding word in your language into English and make that into your name

Do:

  1. Choose a name from the 100 most popular names for your birth year
  2. If possible, choose a name that sounds somewhat similar to your real name
  3. Do not choose a variation as your official name
  4. Do not worry about what a name means

The program does

Choose a name from the 100 most popular names for your birth year

I download data from SSA baby names data which the post suggested.

I put it on the GitHub, which has already been formatted in JSON.

You can use it for free or make another English name application. Enjoy!

How I choose

  1. Finding inspiration from my Chinese name, Lixin Can, which I want an English name began with L.
  2. Then I look for some English names in 1994 to choose which I liked.
    1. Levi
    2. Alex
    3. Lucas
    4. Liam
  3. Checking name following my family name as username on social website, e.g. LeviCao.
    1. Levi (biblical)
    2. Alex (already taken)
    3. Lucas (too popular)
    4. Liam (too popular)
  4. Search each name meaning from NameBerry and BehindTheName to find variants of the name.
  5. I like Alex most, then I finally picked Lex for my English name.

References