Chinese names - Gender?

[bgd]

Were the characters for her name by chance 蝀昉, 洞芳 or maybe even 涷芳？

This Dong,蝀 ， is nice enough to be a girl's name - it can be used to mean rainbow.

Besides this Fang, 昉， which means dawn, this one, 芳 (meaning fragrant), could be used, too.

While Mei and Ling are commonly used for girl's names, for other names you may need to know the tones to be able to infer a gender.

Didn't see the Chinese characters. Sounds like that would have helped my colleagues recongnise the gender.

[maneo]

Dong Fang should be 董芳 (female) or 董方 (, Male). Should always look at the Chinese words and not the Hanyu Pinyin.

If she was from a single child family (which is very likely) then, yes, Dong Fang could be her full name and 董 would be the most common Dong surname.
At least two other surnames, 东 and 冬， are possible, but are rare.

As for the 2nd name, the given name, there are a couple other possibilities besides 芳: 纺，昉。
Same goes for masculine names： 仿， 放， 枋 。

There are Chinese parents who think "outside the box" when naming their children, so this can only exacerbate the issue of trying to infer gender.

[Strong Eagle]

How about this name... LOW YI WEI... he/she was a very helpful person at IRAS but I had no idea if male or female, and thus simply addressed the person by his/her full name.

[earthfriendly]

Yes, at a near native level. I wouldn't even try.

Also in Singapore, I've noticed most people have a tendency to use Hokkien/Hakka/Teochew for family names, but Mandarin Pin Yin for given names.

Originally, the romanization of names were based on the dialects. Govt, in an effort to standardized the Chinese languages, around the 80's (???), made everyone include the pinyin version of their names (both first and last names) on their IDs and for the newly-borns, they were no longer issued the dialect version of their names.

[maneo]

How about this name... LOW YI WEI... he/she was a very helpful person at IRAS but I had no idea if , Male or female, and thus simply addressed the person by his/her full name.

Addressing by the full name usually the best thing to do when uncertain.

Have also found the IRAS staff to be quite helpful.
When I've gone there, have only seen ladies.
However, there are many guys with this name, too.

[therat]

How about this name... LOW YI WEI... he/she was a very helpful person at IRAS but I had no idea if , Male or female, and thus simply addressed the person by his/her full name.

No way to tell is male or female by hanyu pinyin.

[therat]

Originally, the romanization of names were based on the dialects. Govt, in an effort to standardized the Chinese languages, around the 80's (???), made everyone include the pinyin version of their names (both first and last names) on their IDs and for the newly-borns, they were no longer issued the dialect version of their names.

yes.. during 80s, government did insist newly born to have only HanYuPinYin for both first and last name (surname).
However, this action result lots of complain from parents and grandparents as changing the surname is no no for them. They are not very very happy about this.
Complain since day 1 it started.

After few year, by late 80s (I think) , government give way.
Newly born baby are allow to keep their last name (surname) as it is. No need to use pin yin.

Now newly born baby name has few option for naming , will be decide by parent
1. Surname (dialect) name (yinpin) --> this is commonly use
2. both Surname and name (yinpin)
3. both surname and name (dialect)

Birth certification will have either one of the above three plus Chinese character.

During my name, I can put all these 3 on NRIC (aka ID)
1. surname and name (dialect)
2. surname and name (yin pin)
3. Chinese character