The parts of China
that don't translate.
A Chinese name isn't a label — it's a sentence. A bat isn't a bat — it's good luck. A fish isn't dinner — it's abundance.
Cathaypedia is for people who want to understand the logic underneath, not just copy the surface. Five sections, one obsession: explaining things properly.
Six ways in
Start anywhere. Each one opens its own page. They all connect to each other eventually — that's rather the point of Chinese culture.
Your Chinese Name
Three candidates, hand-built, each one explained character by character — including the awkward homonyms free generators never warn you about. This is the one thing here that isn't free.
Available now · $9Character Lab
Chinese characters are pictures with logic in them. Take them apart and the meaning explains itself.
ReadingZodiac Lookup & Compatibility
Enter a birth date and get the exact animal. Check any two people against each other, too.
Tool · freeProverbs
Four characters, an entire philosophy. Read alongside what they mean literally — the gap is where the wit lives.
ReadingSymbols & Homophones
Bats mean good fortune. Fish mean surplus. Almost all of Chinese symbolism runs on sound, not image.
ReadingQuestions, answered
Choosing a name, using it at work, matching it to your English one, and why your January birthday might not be the animal you think.
GuideA Chinese name, built properly
Every other section here is free. This one isn't — because it takes real work, and a bad name follows you around for years.
Why not just use a generator?
Because generators don't know that a genuinely beautiful name like 诗婷 lands badly in an English mouth, or that your surname choice might read as a brand of cooking oil. Three filters every name goes through:
- 一Meaning, translated honestly — what each character conveys, why it pairs with the other, and what it signals to a native speaker.
- 二Sound, tuned to you — tones that flow, plus echoes of your English name where the sounds map cleanly into Mandarin.
- 三Embarrassment screening — every awkward reading flagged before you use it in a meeting.
Not sure where to begin?
The FAQ answers the questions people actually ask before choosing a name they'll introduce themselves with for the next decade.