Is the baby’s Bazi (八字) a requirement to engage your naming service?
Yes, we will need your baby’s date and time of birth in order to compute the Bazi. Finding a name with favourable elements to the baby’s Bazi is the most important step. A name may be auspicious based on its character strokes 五格 but it must also match the Bazi in order for the baby to benefit from it. For example, movie actor Donnie Yen’s Chinese name Zhen Zidan 甄子丹 is very good in terms of its strokes combinations (see below). However, does this mean that every boy with the same surname as him, if we name him Zidan 子丹, he will be just as successful as Donnie Yen? The answer is no, since their Bazi will be completely different.

What are some mistakes that parents should avoid when naming a baby?
Parents who have more than one child tend to use a single Chinese character across all the children’s names. For example, if 3 daughters, then Xiu Yun (秀云), Xiu Li (秀丽), Xiu Ping (秀莲). So the character 秀Xiu has been repeated even though it may be beneficial to only one of them. This is not encouraged because each child’s Bazi is unique and has different favorable elements individually. Remember, “One man’s dessert is another man’s poison”. Each child’s name should be personalized according to his/her Bazi.
Another thing we discourage is the use of very uncommon Chinese characters for names. It is impractical since most people end up not knowing how to read the name and thus defeat the purpose of a good name.

Why the number of strokes for the Chinese characters in your report is different from what I have counted?
Based on the Kangxi dictionary 康熙字典, there is a set of rules which dictate how some characters are calculated in terms of the strokes. You may encounter differences due to this reason. The Kangxi dictionary is the standard reference used by most experts of Chinese name selection, including us. Thus, you can safely follow the number of strokes indicated in our report.

Why the five elements of the Chinese characters you used are different from the online Kangxi dictionary 康熙字典?
In the various Kangxi dictionaries available online, you will notice that they do indicate the elements of every Chinese character. This element can differ from the one in our report. Why? The fact is that no one knows the source of which the online dictionaries derived their elements from. The original version of the Kangxi dictionary does not indicate the elements of the Chinese characters at all.

Whichever element is missing in the baby’s Bazi will become the favourable element?
No, it is not as simple as counting the elements to find the one that appears the least or missing from the Bazi. Most Bazi software will derive the favourable elements this way based on the counting of the elements. We, on the other hand, use a manual multi-step process to identify the favourable elements, which is more accurate.

Can a master provide a good name if he is not an expert in Bazi 八字?
Based on our knowledge, choosing a name that matches the child’s Bazi is not only the first step but also the most important step. Missing this step, it is unlikely the name will be auspicious at all, even if it met the other conditions of a good name. So the answer is no.

Do you provide service for selection of auspicious English names?
No, we do not provide this service. However, if you are our client and have already shortlisted some English names, Master Chua can help you to pick the one that is most suitable. He uses a different system, which is based on the pronunciations/sounds to identify the one that is most suited for the baby. This is free of charge for our clients.

Can I provide a list of Chinese names I came up with and get Master Chua to check which ones are the most auspicious?
We would discourage that. The reason being we have had experience doing this in the past but realised that more than 90% of the time, the names provided by the parents were not usable at all (failed many of the stringent criteria we follow). Thus, the entire process was time-consuming but not helpful.