How To Say And Write Your Name In Chinese (+ Examples)

How to Translate Your Name into Chinese

The Chinese language does not have an alphabet, rather, the writing system is made up of thousands of different characters. So in Chinese, all foreign names – whether they come from English, Greek, or Russian – need to be written in characters, which are words essentially, instead of letters.

“Then how do I translate my name into Chinese?”, you asked.

Well, with a few exceptions, the majority of the foreign names are translated, more accurately, transliterated into Chinese phonetically by stringing together Chinese characters that sound similar to the syllables or phonemes of the original name. For instance, Jason becomes 杰森 (Jié sēn), two Chinese characters that sound like Jason in English.

Translating Western Names into Chinese

For certain Western names, transliteration is rather convenient because all you have to do is break your name into its component syllables and imagine how you would pronounce them in a thick Chinese accent, and you’ve got it.

Case in point:

• Amanda → A-man-da → 阿曼达 (pronunciation: Ā màn dá)
• Kamila → Ka-mi-la→ 卡米拉 (pronunciation: Kǎ mǐ lā)
• Mina → Mi-na → 米娜 (pronunciation: Mǐ nà)

As you can see, even though these names may look completely unrecognizable when written in Chinese characters, their Pinyin versions (the Romanization of the Chinese characters) look pretty much the same as the originals, aside from the tone marks.

But here’s the main issue:

Because Chinese characters can only represent syllables as concrete blocks of sound but not as fluid combinations of letters, most western names, when transliterated into Chinese, don’t sound like the originals.

For instance,

• Bradley → B-ra-d-ley → 布莱德利 (pronunciation: Bù lái dé lì)
• Patricia → Pa-t-ri-ci-a → 帕特里西娅 (pronunciation: Pà tè lǐ xī yà)

Since each Chinese character is just one syllable, you need a different character to represent the different parts of a consonant or vowel cluster which would be pronounced together as one sound in English (e.g. “tr”, “ia”).

So, in the above examples, while “Bradley” is two syllables in English, it becomes a four-character/syllable name when transliterated into Chinese. And “Patricia”, a three-syllable English name is now five syllables in Chinese.

Besides, Mandarin Chinese has a much smaller stock of sounds compared with English (there are only around 400 syllables in Chinese while there are over 10,000 in English), so very often, the sounds in the foreign name don’t exist at all in Chinese. In that case, you just have to produce the closest equivalent you can!

Just look at what happened to these names.  

• Kimberly → Kim-ber-ly → 金伯莉 (pronunciation: Jīn bó lì)(There is neither “kim” nor “ber” sound in Chinese, so “jīn” and “bó” are used for approximation)

• Donald → Don-nal-d → 唐纳德 (pronunciation: Táng nà dé)(There is neither “don” nor “nal” sound in Chinese, so “Táng” and “nà” are used for approximation)

Though these Chinese transliterations barely sound anything like the original names, it’s about the best you can do!

Bottom line: most of the time, Chinese transliterations are a very, very rough approximation of the sound of the foreign names.

Now, here’s the interesting part:

The Chinese transliterations of foreign names don’t always have to be based on their pronunciation in English. Many names are translated into Chinese in a way that uses the sounds of their original word.

For example, John is called 约翰 (Yuē hàn) in Chinese, which is nothing like the pronunciation of “John” in English. This is because the name “John” itself is derived from the Hebrew name “Yohanan”. So the Chinese translation of John is based on the name’s pronunciation in Hebrew rather than English – hence the translated name 约翰 (Yuē hàn).

In a similar fashion, “Joseph” is translated as 约瑟夫 (Yuē sè fū) in Chinese. It follows the pronunciation of its original Hebrew name “Yosef” instead of the English name “Joseph”.   

Translating Asian Names into Chinese

While most foreign names are translated into Chinese by sound, it’s not the case for every name.

For Asian countries that have historically used Chinese characters, original names in characters are retained in Chinese. 

For example, the famous Japanese artist Yoko Ono is 小野洋子 in Chinese, which is the same as her name written in Japanese Kanji. Since characters are read differently in Japanese and Chinese, 小野洋子 is pronounced “Ono Yōko” in the original Japanese but (Xiǎoyě Yángzǐ) in Chinese.

The same goes for Korean names and Vietnamese names – since both countries had once used a writing system based on Chinese characters, you don’t need to translate the names into Chinese phonetically as you would do with western names.