Delphine in Chinese: 道尔菲娜

Delphine is written 道尔菲娜 in Mandarin (dào ěr fēi nà) — one character for the surname 道 and three for the given name. The characters are chosen to carry the sound and the sense of Delphine rather than to transliterate it letter by letter, which is how Chinese names are actually made. On this page the seal is carved in the Zhongshan King (中山王) bronze-inscription seal script, with the Academia Sinica Chongxi Small Seal (崇羲篆體) filling any character the main font lacks.

道尔菲娜 breaks down as 道 (dào) — The Way — the road walked and the principle behind it: 道德, the Way and its power, Laozi's whole book in one character; 尔 (ěr) — You — the classical 'thou', intimate and level; also 'thus', the way a thing is; 菲 (fēi) — Luxuriant fragrance — 芳菲: the rank green smell of growing things in full leaf; 娜 (nà) — Grace of movement, a willow in wind. The seal note we would put under it: Four characters: the full classical face, read right column first.

Pinyin: dào ěr fēi nà — 道 is tone 4 (a sharp fall, like a full stop); 尔 is tone 3 (a dip down and back up); 菲 is tone 1 (a flat, level pitch held high); 娜 is tone 4 (a sharp fall, like a full stop). Mandarin has four tones plus a neutral tone, and getting them wrong is the most common mistake Western speakers make with Chinese names — the seal itself is unaffected, since the carving is of the written form.

Because names in Chinese are chosen, not inherited by sound. 娜 (nà) reads grace of movement, a willow in wind — and its own history runs: Graceful, the movement of a woman walking — the Thousand Character Classic uses it for the sound of a swaying bough, 娿娜, which is the bough and not the woman. The character is 女 beside 那, the word for “that” and a question: what is she doing? Answer: swaying.

11 other names on this site carry at least one of the same characters — 汉娜 for Hannah, 乐娜 for Lena, 露娜 for Luna, 娜雅 for Inaya, 娜美 for Naomi, 瑟瑞娜 for Serena, 珊娜 for Sana, 苏菲 for Sophia, and more. Chinese names combine a family name with one or two given-name characters, so a single character can carry a hundred different people; the character page above lists every name that uses it.

Delphine carries the sense The dolphin; of Delphi (Greek, the womb's oracle). The Chinese name 道尔菲娜 answers it with 道 (The Way) and 尔 (You) and 菲 (Luxuriant fragrance) and 娜 (Grace of movement, a willow in wind) — chosen for sound and sense together, the way a Chinese parent chooses a name rather than the way a wire service transliterates one. The full account — the etymology, the bearers, and why this site renders it as 道尔菲娜 — is in the section above.