Journal
Notes on Chinese naming
Short pieces about the parts of naming that are easy to get wrong, written by the people who built the engine. Every number in these posts comes from the running system, and where a limit is honest, it is stated.
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How to check a Chinese name someone gave you
Four checks you can run in five minutes — including the collision library that catches names which sound fine until someone repeats them back to you.
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Giving a Chinese name as a gift
What to hand over with a name, what to leave out, and why one line of first person does more than the calligraphy.
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Why “it sounds like your name” is a weak rule for Chinese names
Transliteration keeps the sound and discards the meaning. What that costs, which collisions it creates, and what a meaning-first approach does instead.
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Ten in the morning is not the same hour everywhere
Longitude and the equation of time can move true solar time by nearly two hours — enough to change the hour pillar of a chart. Real engine output, three cities, one clock.
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How to read a Chinese name
Surname first, one syllable per character, tone marks that change the meaning — and the four mistakes that mark a name out as borrowed rather than owned.
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What a BaZi chart claims — and what it does not
Four pillars, a day master, a strength reading and a favourable element. A plain account of what the chart is for, and where the honest limits are.