Method · NFIP · Live vote n = 0
Native First-Impression Protocol
Five questions a Chinese audience votes on. The panel is about 200,000 followers on Douyin and Xiaohongshu. A sample votes; we do not claim 200,000 ballots. Live n = 0 until the first vote actually runs. We will not fake a score. Until then, the automated first layer is the checker on the sister site — no LLM.
Output is a distribution
Raters do not average into a 94. A name can be “real personal name” for eight people and “foreign spelling” for two. That split is the result — the $199 PDF reports those counts. A single number would hide the disagreement that actually matters.
01
First glance
In one look, what is this?
- A real personal name
- A foreign spelling / transliteration
- A nickname
- Not a name
02
Apparent gender
Without being told, this reads as…
- Masculine
- Feminine
- Unmarked / either
- Cannot tell
03
Apparent era
When would you expect to meet this name?
- Contemporary
- A generation older
- Literary / historical
- Out of time / invented
04
Said fast
When spoken quickly, does it snag?
- Clean
- Funny
- Food / menu
- Slang
- Unlucky or dirty homophone
05
Would you put this on a classmate?
Could you introduce a colleague with this and not explain?
- Yes, without a footnote
- Only with a story
- No
Why five items, not a vibe
Natives clock a name in the time it takes to read a WeChat display. The protocol forces that glance into language: is it a person, a spelling, a pet name, or a caption? Does gender and era land? Does it turn into salad, slang, or bad luck when said fast? Would you put it on a classmate without explaining? Those are the tells teachers and generators skip because they are optimizing for sound.
The automated first layer
Before any rater panel, the Keep / Kill / Fix checker on Chinese Name Check runs a deterministic heuristic: real-surname structure, classic transliterations, middle dots, food collisions, captions, and the feminine transliteration endings 娜 / 莉 / 丽. It does not call a model. Unsure is Fix, never Keep. That is a filter, not a native first impression. On Audience vote ($199), those five items are the ballot for a Chinese audience on Douyin and Xiaohongshu. NFIP is that ballot, not a native-speaker essay pretending to be a poll. The sister site’s method page is chinesenamecheck.com/method.
What n = 0 means
The Chinese audience exists (~200K on Douyin and Xiaohongshu). The first ballot has not run. Empty counts stay empty — we will not fill a bar chart with invented percentages, and we will not claim 200,000 people each vote on one name. When a vote runs, Audience vote ($199) emails the tally as a PDF. Until then, that SKU is waitlisted. Use the checker on a name you already have, or request Native Name if you want the name card files without waiting on a poll.
The questions this protocol answers
How many characters should a Chinese name have?
A native personal name is almost always two or three characters: a real Chinese surname in first position, then a given name of one or two characters. Four-plus strings with a middle dot are how news copy files a foreigner, not how a classmate is introduced.
Can I use a Chinese surname?
Yes — that is the point of an ID-card name. Public figures who live in Chinese media mostly do this: 陆, 费, 裴, 彭, 卫. A stage name like 大山 is the honest exception, not the template.
Will Chinese people think my name is real?
That is what the audience votes on, using the five NFIP items, at a glance. Output is a split of counts — not a fake 94. The panel is a Chinese audience on Douyin and Xiaohongshu (~200K followers). A sample votes; we do not claim 200,000 ballots. Until the first vote runs (n = 0), Audience vote is Pilot and we will not email a fake poll. The automated first layer for a name you already have is the checker on the sister site.
How do you verify a name with native speakers?
Five questions, not a vibe: first glance, apparent gender, apparent era, said-fast homophone, and whether you would put it on a classmate. On Audience vote ($199), that is the ballot. The PDF reports actual counts. We do not collapse it into a score, and we do not substitute a native-speaker essay for a poll that has not run.