My friend N, a historian of Song and Yuan Dynasty Daoism and someone who understands these things, has come up with a Chinese name for me. With my limited vocab I'd come up with 辣马, la (pepper from suanlatang, hot and sour soup) and ma (horse), since I am a Fire Horse in Chinese cosmology, but was told this just sounded odd.
Lai 賴 or Luo 羅 would top my list for your Chinese surname. Given names are tougher, but you could start with something semi close in sound to Mark, such as Maokai 懋凱 ("marvelous and triumphant"... resonates with the Biblical connection to the Book of Mark). Luo Maokai 羅懋凱 is actually a pretty nice sounding name in Chinese... the Chinese characters read well, too (2nd tone, 4th tone, 3rd tone). Run it by some native Chinese and see what they think!
The native Chinese approved! In PRC I'll be using the simplified form:
Lai 賴 or Luo 羅 would top my list for your Chinese surname. Given names are tougher, but you could start with something semi close in sound to Mark, such as Maokai 懋凱 ("marvelous and triumphant"... resonates with the Biblical connection to the Book of Mark). Luo Maokai 羅懋凱 is actually a pretty nice sounding name in Chinese... the Chinese characters read well, too (2nd tone, 4th tone, 3rd tone). Run it by some native Chinese and see what they think!
The native Chinese approved! In PRC I'll be using the simplified form:
罗懋凱
