Lan'andi?

ClaraB · Post by **ClaraB** » Fri Feb 24, 2006 12:31 am

What does the 「藍安地」 (lán'āndì) in lazza's signature mean? It would be translated "blue peaceful Earth", does it mean the earth as the blue planet? But why in red?

Or is it just a transliteration of a foreign (to Chinese) word, maybe his name? Has it got some deeper meaning?

Questions about questions.

Dakkus · Post by **Dakkus** » Fri Feb 24, 2006 2:30 pm

Да, это его имя

ClaraB · Post by **ClaraB** » Fri Feb 24, 2006 4:32 pm

Dakkus wrote:Да, это его имя

謝謝. (Or should I say "Спасибо"?

)

So his personal name is Andy? *curious*

yli · Post by **yli** » Fri Feb 24, 2006 11:56 pm

I had the same question - a long time ago

lazza wrote:
yli wrote:off topic, what does 藍安地 means lazza ?
It's my real name (Andy Lamb) in Chinese characters - the nearest phonetic equivalent that has meaning as a name (in Mandarin Chinese) is Lan An Di.
Lan (my Chinese surname, or xìngshì) means Blue, and An Di (my given name, or míngzì) means Peaceful Earth.

So, a good translation ClaraB

ClaraB · Post by **ClaraB** » Sat Feb 25, 2006 2:32 pm

Ah!

Therefore lazza's avatar is a lamb.

Now I found the thread:
http://forum.eurobilltracker.eu/viewtop ... amb#196218

So, a good translation ClaraB

The dictionary is your friend...

ClaraB · Post by **ClaraB** » Sat Feb 25, 2006 2:33 pm

*ups*

Dakkus · Post by **Dakkus** » Sat Feb 25, 2006 3:28 pm

How do the Chinese dictionaries work? Are the words in a random order? :)

ClaraB · Post by **ClaraB** » Sat Feb 25, 2006 11:02 pm

Dakkus wrote:How do the Chinese dictionaries work? Are the words in a random order?

Now they usually are in phonetic order. So if you search for 藍 you just have to look after "lán" (lan2). What? You do not know how to pronounce the word?

Then you have to look in the radical index.

A radical is a key element in a Chinese Charakter, which usually usually shows what kind of thing the character stands for (look at Radical (Chinese character) ). The radical of 藍 is 艸 (grass; upper part of the caracter). So you search for the radical and then count how many many strokes are remaining. The characters are sorted in the order of the count of strokes. You find 藍 at Radical 艸 plus 14 strokes. There is not just one character so you have to choose the right one.

But now in the computer age, things are much easier.

You just enter the character (copy & paste) and get the pronounciation and meaning.

lazza · Post by **lazza** » Mon Feb 27, 2006 1:15 pm

Wow! My ears were burning!

Good explanations ClaraB. Are you able to speak Chinese? (ni hui bu hui shuo zhongwen?!) Also, which on-line dictionary did you use?

For anyone who is interested, there is a good site called zhongwen.com that has a searchable dictionary in english, characters/radicals and pinyin - the most common romanization of chinese, such as "lán" for 藍 - as well as explanations of radicals, character history, etc. (and a pinyin chat room!).

It's not easy to get a Chinese name - it's best to discuss with a native Chinese who can give you a suitable name. There are only certain words/characters that can be used for surnames, and word combinations and word associations are very important. For example, I had the choice to go with "yáng" 羊 as surname (this is "sheep" in Chinese

), but it has unlucky connotations in certain circumstances, and is also not regarded as a common name. So I chose the phonetic name lán 藍 (although also had the choice of lán 蘭, which means orchid!)

ClaraB · Post by **ClaraB** » Tue Feb 28, 2006 12:33 am

lazza wrote:Are you able to speak Chinese? (爾會不會說中文?)

Not at all. 不會.

(ouf, it was hard to find the characters...) I just had a class of Classical Chinese where we read especially Mencius (孟子 - the famous "仁義而已矣!"). The good news with Chinese is, that you don't need to have any idea how to pronounce the word to understand the meaning, and that you don't have to think about any kind of conjugation. There were also bad news...

Also, which on-line dictionary did you use?

I did it the hackish way.

Unicode is a wonderful thing if you deal with Chinese or mix different languages. You can download the Unihan-database (Unihan.txt.gz) at the unicode site. It looks like the following:

Code: Select all

[...]
U+85CD  kDaeJaweon      1528.350
U+85CD  kDefinition     blue; indigo plant; surname
U+85CD  kEACC   4B5629
[...]
U+85CD  kLau    1769
U+85CD  kMandarin       LAN2 LA5
U+85CD  kMatthews       3802
[...]

So if you know the Unicode code number of a character you just have to do a

Code: Select all

zcat Unihan.txt.gz | grep '^U+85CD'

Okay, that may look

but I have written a little script that makes things a bit more confortable. One good thing of Unicode is also that the Chinese characters are sorted like in the radical index that makes searching a character a bit easier. But there is of course no list of characters having obscure radicals like in the paper dictionary...

For anyone who is interested, there is a good site called zhongwen.com

Looks good!

So I chose the phonetic name lán 藍 (although also had the choice of lán 蘭, which means orchid!)

By the way, Lán 蘭 is the given name of Ran-chan (Rachel) in the manga / anime Detective Conan (Case Closed)

(seems that they have changed the names in the English version - not so in German).

dippu · Post by **dippu** » Tue Feb 28, 2006 10:04 am

ClaraB wrote:By the way, Lán 蘭 is the given name of Ran-chan (Rachel) in the manga / anime Detective Conan (Case Closed) (seems that they have changed the names in the English version - not so in German).

If you are interessted in Anime and Manga maybe you should check our club: http://anime-daisuki-berlin.de (sorry, only in German available)