A Study Of People's Names From The Aspect Of Intercultural Communication

People's names refer to the symbols indicating each particular member in the society. As an essential part of human language, people's names are playing a very dominant role in the communication. Different countries have shaped different naming systems, which involve almost every aspect of human society, such as cultures, history, geography, economy, politics, etc. This paper aims at drawing some differences in the name systems between Chinese and English, thus providing us some creative strategies to the name problems arising in the process of intercultural communication.This paper consists of three parts. In the first chapter, the writer intends to make a thorough comparison of the name systems between Chinese and English in their respective naming principles, cultural backgrounds and semantic structures, etc. In the second chapter, the paper first classifies intercultural communication into two categories: the oral intercultural communication and the written intercultural communication. In the process of the first type of communication, people from different countries and cultures adopt different strategies to names.In order to minimize the misunderstandings in the intercultural communication, speakers should first understand the foreign cultures. By doing so, they will be well aware of the differences in the name usages and make the communication much efficient by addressing each other properly. In written intercultural communication, the paper focuses on translation of people's names. To those who know little about the cultures and languages of the English speaking countries, translation is the very medium to connect them and the SL writers. In translating, we should choose the mostproper way to render the original meanings of the works so that best understanding and communication can be achieved between the SL writers and the TL readers. The last chapter concludes the paper.