Your name in Chinese: how it’s written in characters
92 English names in their accepted Chinese spelling, with pinyin and the sound of every syllable. Find your name, hear how it’s pronounced and print a practice sheet to learn to write it.
Introduce yourself: 我叫艾米丽 — wǒ jiào Àimǐlì, “my name is Emily”.
How English names are written in Chinese
Chinese has no letters, so a foreign name can’t be spelled “as it sounds”: it is written in syllables. The name is split into parts, and each part gets a character that reads similarly: Anna is 安 ān and 娜 nà, David is 大 dà and 卫 wèi.
The characters aren’t picked at random: English names have accepted equivalents that Chinese newspapers, reference books and translators use. That’s why Michael is always 迈克尔 in Chinese and Elizabeth is 伊丽莎白. Those are the spellings collected here.
Chinese has far fewer syllables than English, and some sounds don’t exist in it. So the name comes out different: “r” turns into “l”, consonant clusters get vowels between them, and a final consonant often becomes a syllable of its own. Christopher becomes Kèlǐsītuōfú, five syllables, and Robert becomes Luóbótè.
What the characters in a name mean
Almost nothing: they are chosen for their sound, not their meaning. 安 in Anna means “peace”, but it is there only because it reads ān. A name like this can’t be translated character by character.
There is one rule, though: names get “pretty” characters, and women’s names get ones that look feminine. 娜 and 娅 have the “woman” radical 女 on the left, 丽 means “beautiful”, 琳 means “jade”. These characters tell a Chinese reader at once that the name is a woman’s.
How to introduce yourself
- 你叫什么名字？nǐjiàoshénmemíngziWhat’s your name?
- 我叫安娜wǒjiàoĀnnàMy name is Anna.
- 认识你很高兴rènshinǐhěngāoxìngNice to meet you.
Put your name after . More phrases for meeting people are in the article on your first phrases.
A spelled-out name and a “Chinese name” are different things
A name spelled by sound is long: Christopher takes five characters, Elizabeth four. Chinese names are short: a one-character surname and a given name of one or two, with the surname first and the given name chosen for its meaning.
That’s why people who study the language seriously or work with China often get a separate Chinese name: two or three characters that sound like the real one and mean something good. A teacher or a native speaker friend usually helps choose it: characters have many shades of meaning, and it’s easy to get it wrong on your own.
Frequently asked questions
How do I find out how my name is written if it’s not on the list?
The list only has names with one settled spelling. For a rarer name, ask a teacher or a native speaker: it is written by the same rules, syllable by syllable, but the choice of characters is worth checking with a person.
Why can one name have several Chinese spellings?
Because the name is written by sound, and one syllable can be matched by several characters. Common names have one accepted version, and that is the one given here. Other sources may show different ones.
How do I write my surname in Chinese?
The same way, syllable by syllable. It goes after the given name, with a dot in the middle of the line: Emily Smith is 艾米丽·史密斯. Chinese people do it the other way round: the surname comes first.
Can I get a tattoo of my name in Chinese characters?
You can, but show the spelling to a native speaker first. To a Chinese reader a foreign name is just a string of syllables, so the characters have to be written correctly and in the right order.
What does my name mean in Chinese?
Nothing: the characters of a written name are chosen for their sound. Only real Chinese names have a meaning, because they are chosen for what their characters mean.
Learn to talk about yourself
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