What does Wai Tsing mean?

January 3, 2006 8:09 AM

Does 'Wai Tsing' mean anything in Chinese or any other Asian language?

So over the past week on Xbox Live, I've been constantly invited to games by Chinese players who then seem surprised that they're dealing with dumb ole American me.

My Live gamertag is 'waitsing', as in 'the action of one who is like Tom Waits' and I'm guessing this is where the confusion comes from. My random Google tranlation attempts lead to 'wai' meaning 'outside' and 'tsing' meaning green, but I think I'm missing something.

posted by robocop is bleeding to Writing & Language (9 answers total)

It seems to be a not-uncommon name.
posted by TonyRobots at 8:15 AM on January 3, 2006

hard to say without characters, but I seem to think it would be a female name if that's indeed the interpretation - which would explain a LOT.
posted by kcm at 8:38 AM on January 3, 2006

Response by poster: As a name, does it translate to anything?
posted by robocop is bleeding at 8:39 AM on January 3, 2006

Qing is green (ching, like cha-ching). It's my wife's Chinese name, so that much I know.
posted by Pollomacho at 8:50 AM on January 3, 2006

青 is qing1 is green (in Mandarin).. but then so is 綠 (lu4), and then there's about 20 other meanings for qing. so, without characters, not so much. :)
posted by kcm at 8:56 AM on January 3, 2006

Tsing is the Wade-Giles (older Romanization form) for qing. Pronounced "ching" but with the ch, unvocalized, approaching ts in sound. As kcm says, there are a number of qings, but 青 for blue/green/fresh/color of the sea/color of the sky is what most Chinese would assume is meant. It'd be the default guess. As for Wai, that too can be a Mandarin sound, such as wai4 外 for "outside". Or it could be a Cantonese sound. I don't think there'd be any default guess for which wai is your wai. But you can see why Chinese would assume you too are Chinese.

So if you want to be 外青, have at it!
posted by mono blanco at 1:54 PM on January 3, 2006

Correction...'Tsing' isn't Wade-Giles. That would be 'ch'ing'. Tsing comes from some older form of romanization, and is seen most often in the name Tsinghua University 清华大学 .
posted by mono blanco at 2:05 PM on January 3, 2006

Similarly, there are at least 20 other characters pronounced 'Wai', and the three most common ones are 'outside', 'to protect', and 'great'. Take your pick.
posted by of strange foe at 2:17 PM on January 3, 2006

I think kcm really says everything that's important. If you saw someone on XBox Live named Stacy, you wouldn't be reacting to the meaning of the name, you'd be going "Woah, a girl". That's what they're doing.
posted by dagnyscott at 2:53 PM on January 3, 2006