Lam Ching-Ying
Lam Ching-Ying:
The Name


First, a basic explanation of Chinese names to those who might not be familiar with them.
(I am not Chinese, and any errors that appear here are strictly my own ignorance or stupidity. But I believe everything here is accurate.)

Reflecting the importance of family and ancestors, the surname comes first. So Lam is the family name, and Ching-Ying is his personal name. I use the term "personal name", because "given name" doesn't quite apply, nor does the phrase "first name", and Christian name is terribly Eurocentric and wholly inapplicable. The reason "given name" doesn't apply is that his given name would be Gun-Bo, not Ching-Ying. When a child becomes an adult, he or she chooses a name to reflect the person they have become and are becoming. So "personal name" seems to me to be the best term to use, with perhaps "chosen name" being a workable alternative.

The romanization of Chinese names is quite inconsistent since they have characters to represent entire words and concepts, rather than the western usage of characters to represent individual sounds. This may seem at first glance to be an inferior system to the unfamiliar, but it has its own advantages that might not be immediately apparent. For one thing, the use of characters to represent words allows people who speak different languages to communicate with a shared written language. Another strength of this system is that most characters are combinations of others, allowing meaning to be determined by breaking the individual characters apart. For more on this check Rick Harbaugh's Deciphering Chinese Characters at ZhongWen.com. The example below is a rotating link to his site where you can learn more.

You'll notice that I hyphenate Ching-Ying, (as well as all other personal names of Chinese people on this site) but you'll see his name as frequently without the hyphen as with. I choose the option of using the hyphen to indicate that the two words together form his name. In Western society, there is a strong tendency to nicknames and this can often lead to innapropriate abbreviation of many Chinese names. So the hyphen is there as a simple reminder to use both names. This isn't to say that using a single name is never done, but unless you've been told it's OK to do so, and know which name might be used by someone when addressed familiarly, you shouldn't, OK?

While Westerners tend to forget that their names have meanings (for example, mine translates as "Manly Head-of-the-household Huntsman - a terribly macho and innappropriate name for me), this is not the case with Chinese names. They not only remember that the names have meaning, but great care and contemplation of the meanings is a major part of giving or chosing a name.
The family name Lam tranlates as "Forest" or "Grove", and his personal name Ching-Ying translates basicly as "Proper Hero". Unlike mine, his name seems to be quite appropriate. An obvious advantage to a chosen name vs. a given name, eh?
The translation of Gun-Bo is unknown to me. Without having the original characters to refer to, it's almost impossible to determine what they are strictly from the romanization of the name. If I manage to find the actual characters, I'll figure it out and add this info in later.

Writing Chinese characters is an artform unto itself, and for each character there is a proper stroke order. The good folks at www.ocrat.com have a fine database that will show you the proper way to write many Chinese characters. They provided the animated gifs used in the example below:



(Note that after each stroke the animated gifs move slightly to indicate proper direction of the brush)
Lam
Lam (Mandarin - Lin) (Cantonese - Lam)
How To Write Lam
Ching
Ching (Mandarin - Zheng) (Cantonese - Jing)
How To Write Ching
Ying
Ying (Mandarin - Ying) (Cantonese - Ying)
How To Write Ying