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While on a business trip to China, I asked some Chinese friends how my name would be translated into Chinese. The Blair part was easy, after English Prime Minister Tony Blair, but they had a bit more difficulty with my surname. Chinese surnames being written first, they came up with "TangMuShen BuLaiEr" for my Chinese name. Now since most Chinese names are only two or three syllables I thought I'd better shorten it, and it seemed to make sense to take the first syllable of each word, hence, TangBu.
Apparently "Tang" means "soup" and "Bu" means "cloth", so my "name" means that I've spilled soup on my clothes or something. I guess that means it's not really a great name, but I like it anyway.
These characters are written in simplified Chinese. I now know how to write "my" name in traditional characters as well, at least the TangBu part. Some day I'm going to go to China so I can learn how to speak Mandarin Chinese properly.
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| Tang | Mu | Shen | Bu | Lai | Er |