Hannah in Chinese: 汉娜

Hannah is written 汉娜 in Mandarin (hàn nà) — one character for the surname 汉 and one for the given name. The characters are chosen to carry the sound and the sense of Hannah 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.

汉娜 breaks down as 汉 (hàn) — The Han river, and the name China took from the dynasty that tamed it — the sky-river of the old poetry; 娜 (nà) — Grace of movement, a willow in wind. The seal note we would put under it: Favor named by a river: two characters, one wide one narrow.

Pinyin: hàn nà — 汉 is tone 4 (a sharp fall, like a full stop); 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.

8 other names on this site carry at least one of the same characters — 道尔菲娜 for Delphine, 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, 雅娜 for Yana. 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.

Hannah carries the sense Favor, grace (Hebrew channah). The Chinese name 汉娜 answers it with 汉 (The Han river, and the name China took from the dynasty that tamed it) 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 汉娜 — is in the section above.