My fiancee (a historian of the Ming Dynasty) and some of her literary Chinese friends conferred this Chinese name, Tian Yude, on me. (In Wade-Giles I think it would be spelled T'ien Yu-Te.)

Two of the characters, tian and de , were selected because together they sound like "Tindall"; the other, yu , was added to make the given name sound like a typical Chinese one.

Tian , pronounced "tien" (second tone), means "field." Yu (fourth tone) means "cultivate," and de (second tone) means "virtue" -- it's the same character as in the title of the Dao De Jing (Tao Te Ching).

So the given name not only means "cultivate virtue" -- typical of one style of Chinese given names with auspicious meanings -- but also puns on the surname, "Field," which is something that can literally be "cultivated."

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