Chinese names

In a bookstore I came across a used copy of the Lonely Planet guidebook for the United States. It was the Chinese language version, so I flipped through it to see what I could recognize in the section on Wisconsin. Many major cities have Chinese names, and for Milwaukee it is
密尔沃基 , which is spelled “mì ěr wò jī” in Pinyin, which is more or less pronounced as “me are whoa gee.” Milwaukee has always seemed to be a somewhat funny word but the Chinese name sounds even sillier. It’s a rough transliteration of the English name, which is a transliteration of a Native American name (I found three different origins for the city's name on the Internet).

The individual characters don’t make any sense together:
mì – intimate, close, dense
ěr – thus, so
wò – rich, fertile
jī – base

But together they do sound sort of like Milwaukee and I guest that's the point.

The Chinese name for Waukesha County is also a mouthful: 沃基肖县 – wòjīxiāoxiàn (whoa jee she ow she an). The last character means “county.”

Madison has a Chinese name that works well: 麦迪逊 – màidíxùn (may dee shoon).

There is no Chinese name for many of the sites highlighted in the Lonely Planet guidebook. Interspersed among the Chinese characters where English names like “Leon’s Custard” and “Kopp’s Custard.”

Now the name “mì ěr wò jī” always pops into my head whenever I think of home.

Speaking of Chinese names, mine is 山姆 or “shan mu” which uses two characters commonly found in names and sounds similar to my Spanish name “Samú.”