I need help westernizing my name

[hanhan658]

Okay I've lived in the west pretty much all my life, but I've never changed my very fucked up Chinese name. I never got bullied for it but it was always hella embarrassing and a pain in the ass people especially teachers always butcher my name because it does not sound like how it's written at all and I have to explain to every new person I meet back and forth back and forth FUCK! I decide now once and for all I'm done with this BS I'm changing both my name and surname legally. However I run into a very fundamental problem: What the hell should I change my name to?

Changing my surname is pretty straight forward. At first I thought about adopting the surname of my Indonesian great grandma at least it'll be pronounceable for westerners. But nah it sounds too "Indian" for my liking. I doubt I could even legally use it because here's a law in my country that says you can only change to a surname used by more than 200 people unless you have a valid reason, and I think a great grandma might be too far removed for it to be a valid reason. But anyways, I'm now considering changing my surname to Holmberg because there's a black hole with the same name and I'm fairly interested in astronomy and shit, also this surname is used by 465 people in my country. Problem solved.

Changing my first name is a lot harder. There are so many so I could just pick a random one that's considered attractive but there's always some guy I know from somewhere that has the same name. It would be hella awkward if he or our mutuals found out I now suddenly have the same name as him for seemingly no reason. Hell nah I'm not gonna deal with that kinda situation. Finding a similar sounding western name to my original name doesn't work either, my name is just too far gone to have any phonetic similarities with any western names. The best solution might be to find a western name related to the meaning of my original name. My name is consisted of two characters 正 which means either positive, correct, main, just, straight, or upright, and 航 which has the meanings of boat, ship, vessel, navigate, or to sail. I don't need my name to have the meaning of both characters, just one of them.
Could anyone help me find a decent western name that has a meaning related to any of those I mentioned above?

 

[Deleted member 19453]

muhammad

 

[MashedPotatoes]

I'd advise against legally changing your name until after you've used it for at least a year because people generally don't care what your real name is unless they need to identify you by your ID. Even banks, stores, hospitals, and governments let people set preferred names in many cases.
If you really care about meaning, you could look for names of famous sailors and captains I guess. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sea_captains Otherwise, I'd recommend trying a name generator, picking out the options you like, and narrowing it down from there because it's way more flexible.

 

[zeek]

正

Sounds tangentially like Jim - which is from James
James is good because it's common/classic and you can pick variations in everyday life. aka James Jim or Jimmy



Could also do Jason for two syllable.

but don't try to pick based on meaning it's pointless.

I went to school with tons of chinese and koreans and am familiar with all the good and bad strategies they used to pick names. Some would pick tv names or random names they liked or read or saw in a movie. other's pick on meaning. but the best thing to do is to just say your name and let western phonetics guide you and talk to them about assocations to make sure it's not something that is easy to make fun of.

Also don't pick a stupid last name like Holmberg, that shit is so ugly LMFAO.

You can use an indo last name but try shortening or simplifying it if it's long or hard to pronounce in the anglo world. Or just roll with it since most people only say your first name anyway.