我是中文学生 :)
Funnily the first thing you learn in Chinese is how to say who you are. But there's very little help with actually picking a Chinese name!
SOH - family name
Kam - 'generational' name (same as for my brothers)
Yung - my given name
For simplicity, I usually add a hyphen (Kam-Yung) in my name to make it easier for people to refer to me in non-formal settings, i.e. I should be called "Kam Yung" or "Mr. Soh".
Calling me "Kam" (it has happened) is nonsensical from my point of view.
But I think emphasizing the given name offers better UX so given name should be all caps and family name should be all lowercase like this: YUNG Kam soh or soh Kam YUNG.
How? You are introducing a custom capitalization convention nobody uses. People expect the UPPERCASED name, if present, to be the surname (or whatever you can sensible put after Mr/Ms). Going against strong conventions is not a good user experience.
Would just Yung be ok?
For me, that's only for family members and very close friends. :-)
It's like a personal nickname that you feel comfortable with if only a close circle of people use.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_name
This stopped for much of the mainland in the last century due to a few revolutions that happened there.
Not at all. Nowadays there are hundreds of millions of people in Mainland China with a single-character given name. Case in point: former tennis player Li Na, former basketball player Yao Ming.
I say "Mainland China" because I notice people from Hongkong and Taiwan have mostly two-character given names.
Any 'always' cases with names are never to be trusted. https://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-...
surname = "last" name = family name
It depends, I think. I don't know about all of China, but in some places they alternate the length of the given name by generation (e.g. if you have a two-character given name, you give your children a one-character name, and vice versa).
Mostly in Old, Traditional or Southern part of China.
But ya, it is a matter of preference.
The person commonly known as Sun Yat-sen in the west. His given name is 文, he used it to sign all official documents.