<p>There are no general rules. Here are some rough guidelines:</p>

<p>Some characters are used almost exclusively for one gender. For example, almost any character containing 女 will generally only be found in women's names. 
This is particularly true for names like 娟娟, where the 女 radical is part of the meaning. Common characters like 安 or 好 can appear in male names just as easily, despite the fact that they have the 女 radical.</p>

<p>Names that reference flowers, precious stones or beauty, as well as "cute" names are more likely to be women's names. Names that sound grandiose or political are more likely to be men's names. Some characters that strongly point towards a feminine name are 玲 (líng, a word relating to jewelry), 瑩 (yíng, a precious stone), 蓉 (róng, hibiscus flower), as well as 彤 (tóng, red), 美, 麗, 佳, and 艷, all of which mean "beautiful". Conversely, some male-specific characters are 宇 (yú, space), 勇 (brave), 昊 (hào, vast) as well as 囯, 大, 東 and 平. </p>

<p>Once you get used to hearing Chinese men's and women's names, you will become better at guessing which is which. Some sounds and combinations of sounds are more common in one than the other, although that would be too complex to list here.</p>

<p>However, in Chinese there are no formal rules about names, and any family can name their child whatever they like, even if the name does not match the child's gender. So there is no definitive way to identify a person's gender from their name -- not even for Chinese people themselves.</p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2018-08-07T14:48:19.943Z
2018-08-07T16:51:24.240Z
2018-08-07T16:51:24.240Z
KWeiss
<p>You can get a fairly good idea from <a href="http://name.renren.com/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">RenRenWang</a> (when the name is not particularly rare).  For example, if we input my Chinese name 李蓓, we get the response:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>人人网上姓名为 李蓓 的用户共有 3943人，其中 女生92.82%， 男生7.18%</p>
</blockquote>
<p>So of 3943 users, 92.82% are female and 7.18% are male.</p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2020-06-30T23:17:50.717Z
2020-06-30T23:17:50.717Z
Becky 李蓓
<p>Google those names and see if the text says 他 or 她.</p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2018-07-08T04:30:45.857Z
2018-07-08T04:30:45.857Z
Vitaly Osipov
<p>Sometimes when working with Chinese names it is not evidently clear whether the person in question is male or female.</p>

<p>Besides using pure, fallible, intuition - what other methods are there to tell if a name is feminine or a masculine?</p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2018-08-09T09:14:44.907Z
if you know meanings of a character, you can guess it with a high success chance. most of Chinese character has its meanings.
Daniel Yang
CC BY-SA 4.0
2018-07-07T15:12:38.770Z
suggesting baby names: 女： https://huaiyun.pcbaby.com.cn/338/3383253.html
男：https://huaiyun.pcbaby.com.cn/338/3383199.html
user6065
CC BY-SA 4.0
2018-07-07T15:53:00.477Z
燕 when used for 男 seems to occur almost exclusively as 开头 character, whereas for 女 it can occur both as 1st and 2nd character (preferably 2nd?)

姓何以燕字开头的男孩名字 http://www.7mingzi.com/cn-xing-%E4%BD%95-zia-%E7%87%95-xb-1-zs-0/
带燕字的女孩名字大全  https://m.xingming.com/mingzi/nvhai/mz6075.html
user6065
<names>
How to determine if a personal name is feminine or masculine?
# How to determine if a personal name is feminine or masculine?

(Asked by: username_0 on 2018-07-07)

Sometimes when working with Chinese names it is not evidently clear whether the person in question is male or female.

Besides using pure, fallible, intuition - what other methods are there to tell if a name is feminine or a masculine?

**Tags:** names

> **Comments:**
> **username_2**: suggesting baby names: 女： https://huaiyun.pcbaby.com.cn/338/3383253.html 男：https://huaiyun.pcbaby.com.cn/338/3383199.html  
> **username_2**: 燕 when used for 男 seems to occur almost exclusively as 开头 character, whereas for 女 it can occur both as 1st and 2nd character (preferably 2nd?)  姓何以燕字开头的男孩名字 http://www.7mingzi.com/cn-xing-%E4%BD%95-zia-%E7%87%95-xb-1-zs-0/ 带燕字的女孩名字大全  https://m.xingming.com/mingzi/nvhai/mz6075.html  
> **username_1**: if you know meanings of a character, you can guess it with a high success chance. most of Chinese character has its meanings.  

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## 3 answers

### Answer by username_3 on 2018-08-07. Score: 3 | Accepted answer

There are no general rules. Here are some rough guidelines:

Some characters are used almost exclusively for one gender. For example, almost any character containing 女 will generally only be found in women's names.
This is particularly true for names like 娟娟, where the 女 radical is part of the meaning. Common characters like 安 or 好 can appear in male names just as easily, despite the fact that they have the 女 radical.

Names that reference flowers, precious stones or beauty, as well as "cute" names are more likely to be women's names. Names that sound grandiose or political are more likely to be men's names. Some characters that strongly point towards a feminine name are 玲 (líng, a word relating to jewelry), 瑩 (yíng, a precious stone), 蓉 (róng, hibiscus flower), as well as 彤 (tóng, red), 美, 麗, 佳, and 艷, all of which mean "beautiful". Conversely, some male-specific characters are 宇 (yú, space), 勇 (brave), 昊 (hào, vast) as well as 囯, 大, 東 and 平.

Once you get used to hearing Chinese men's and women's names, you will become better at guessing which is which. Some sounds and combinations of sounds are more common in one than the other, although that would be too complex to list here.

However, in Chinese there are no formal rules about names, and any family can name their child whatever they like, even if the name does not match the child's gender. So there is no definitive way to identify a person's gender from their name -- not even for Chinese people themselves.


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### Answer by username_4 on 2020-06-30. Score: 2

You can get a fairly good idea from [RenRenWang](http://name.renren.com/) (when the name is not particularly rare). For example, if we input my Chinese name 李蓓, we get the response:

> 人人网上姓名为 李蓓 的用户共有 3943人，其中 女生92.82%， 男生7.18%

So of 3943 users, 92.82% are female and 7.18% are male.


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### Answer by username_5 on 2018-07-08. Score: -1

Google those names and see if the text says 他 or 她.


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