MingZi Tool

About the Mingzi Tool

The MingZi Tool uses a corpus of Chinese names to guess the following information about a romanized Chinese name (i.e., a Chinese personal name written using English letters):

  • Chinese characters for that name
  • Which part of the name is the surname (family name)
  • Chance that the name bearer is male vs. female
  • Romanization system used to transliterate the name
  • Regional origin of the name (Mainland China, Taiwan, HK)
  • Whether the name is Chinese, Korean, or Vietnamese

The MingZi tool was created by Rebecca L. Starr (Li Xingxing, use MingZi to find the characters!)

Version History

  • 08/07/11: Version 2.0: Live on mingzitool.com, gender-specific results implemented.
  • 08/06/11: Version 1.3: Surname guessing implemented.
  • 08/05/11: Version 1.2. Wade-Giles implemented.
  • 08/05/11: Version 1.1. Pinyin, Jyutping, Yale, and Other Cantonese is up. Traditional chars also up.
  • 08/05/11: Version 1.0. Pinyin conversion only.