Personal names in Chinese culture follow a number of conventions different from those of personal names in Western cultures. Most noticeably, a Chinese name is written with the family name (surname or last name) first and the given name next, therefore "John Smith" as a Chinese name would be "Smith John". For instance, the basketball player who is commonly called Yao Ming would be addressed as "Mr. Yao", not "Mr. Ming".

Some Chinese people who emigrate to, or do business with, Western countries sometimes adopt a Westernized name by simply reversing the "surname-given-name" order to "given-name-surname" ("Ming Yao", to follow the previous example), or with a Western first name together with their surname, which is then written in the usual Western order with the surname last ("Fred Yao"). Other Chinese people sometimes take a combined name, consisting of Western first name, surname, and Chinese given name, in that order ("Fred Yao Ming"), mostly in Hong Kong and Singapore, or in the order of Western first name, Chinese given name, and surname ("Fred Ming Yao").

Traditional naming schemes often followed a pattern of using generation names as part of a two-character given name; however, this is less used today, especially in Mainland China, where many given names use only one character. However, it is still the norm among the Chinese populations of, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Malaysia.

When generation names are used as part of a two-character given name, it is highly inappropriate and confusing to refer to someone by the first part of their given name only which will generally be their generation name. Instead, the entire given name should be used. This should be the case regardless of whether the surname is used. For instance, referring to Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong as Hsien or Hsien Lee would be confusing as this could just as easily refer to his brother. However, this does commonly occur in Western societies where the first part of the given name is frequently mistakenly used as the first name when the given name is not hyphenated or adjoined.

The surname An ( ), literally means "peace" or "tranquility", also serves as an abbreviation of Anxi (Ch: 安息), meaning Parthia in ancient Chinese; Anxi is a transcription of "Arsaces", the founder of the Arsacid Dynasty of Iranian Parthia. Most Parthian visitors to China took the name An to indicate their origin.