How do you decide which Chinese character to use in your name?

I was wondering, since there are so many characters that represent the same sound, how do people decide which one to use when writing their name?

For example, Hayley Williams, the singer of Paramore, uses 海 to represent that first part of her name. But couldn't it be 嗨, 烸, 酼, or 醢? Don't they all also represent the hai sound? How do you choose which one and does it even matter which you pick?

Also, I'm aware that individual characters each have their own meaning. Is it possible for someone with a name with a certain sound, in order for it to be represented in Chinese characters, gets two characters that mean say "shit" and "face" or something like that?

Like for example let's say the name Hannah. It is 汉娜 in Chinese. And I know this isn't the case but let's just assume that 汉 means "shit" and 娜 means "face". Does that mean that a girl named Hannah would be stuck with a name that means shitface, simply because the sounds used to represent her name happened to be an unlucky coincidence?

submitted by /u/Cryogenicastronaut
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