There are 100,000 Chinese characters, but Don’t panic.
Chinese characters are logograms. There are over 100,000 unique Chinese characters. In places other than China, such as the English-speaking world, Chinese people tend to transform their Chinese names in Pinyin, a Romanized spelling system written in alphabets. Don’t panic! You will only see those Pinyin which shares many common phonetic features with English!
Fuk Yu? Professor Butt? Not a meme! Mandarin VS Cantonese
Mandarin is widely used in mainland China and Taiwan. Cantonese, as a variety of Chinese, where its native speakers across large swaths of southeastern China, Hong Kong and some communities of southeast Asia. All in all, you are more likely to meet a Mandarin speaker than a Cantonese speaker based on portion of the population. Plus, Cantonese spelling, also called the Yale system, are easy to pronounce for English speakers. Here, you only need to learn the names in Mandarin Chinese.
Believe it or not, I had a professor originally from Singapore whose family name is 毕/畢, and that character is pronounced as Butt in Cantonese. Plus, ask your Cantonese speaker friend how to pronounce 余福 or 馥瑜 in Cantonese. I will not let you down :)
Easy-Peasy! Pronounce these Chinese names in English
If you are a professor or a host of an event with a long list of Chinese names; if you are learning Chinese; or if you just want to date a Chinese girl! No matter on what occasions you have to pronounce Chinese names, here I list the surnames and acceptable pronunciations. (Credit to DeAnn Liu @IntoChina)
Reminder!
The acceptable pronunciation I list above is acceptable on most occasions. After all, the phonetics systems of the two languages are distinct. If you incline to pronounce those names more precisely, please use google translate to get standard pronunciation audio.