With most Chinese family name monosyllabic, it poses a certain degree of difficulty in converting a multisyllabic Western family name.
Often one would take the first syllable of her Western last name and choose something similar from a list of common Chinese surnames. Otherwise, using one of the most common surnames such as Zhang 张, Wang 王 and Li 李 would avoid problems down the road, they being Chinese equivalents of Smith, Jones and Johnson. What you would need to avoid is to use a surname that is so rare that it is connected to only a few specific families or to a specific geographic locale. Then you might bump into someone from that family or town and it’ll be awkward since you are not their relative (and it is not a Chinese custom to change one’s last name when married, so your family name will be with you all your life).
The other thing you want to avoid is to select a family name that has too many strokes or otherwise difficult to write or remember. In fact the recent changes in the name registration laws of the People’s Republic of China have outlawed characters that cannot easily be entered into a computer database. So if your CJK input methods editor (IME) on your computer cannot find a letter, do not use it.
Generally you will be fine if you stick within the top 45 Chinese surnames — which cover the majority of all Chinese names.
