Harvey in Chinese: 哈维

Harvey is written 哈维 in Mandarin (hā wéi) — one character for the surname 哈 and one for the given name. The characters are chosen to carry the sound and the sense of Harvey 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.

哈维 breaks down as 哈 (hā) — To breathe out, to laugh — the relaxed breath of someone who has decided to stay; 维 (wéi) — The great rope that binds the corners of heaven — to hold, to uphold. The seal note we would put under it: Battle worthy, then the laugh after: two sounds, one rope.

Pinyin: hā wéi — 哈 is tone 1 (a flat, level pitch held high); 维 is tone 2 (a rising pitch, like the start of a question). 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.

Yes. 哈 (hā) is one of the recorded Chinese surnames. A surname out of the western regions. Under the Mongols, a statesman of the lands west of China took the great seal of state and was granted the short name 哈 by the Chinese court he served; his line still signs it, mainly among the Hui, three thousand miles from the city he came from. The full account, with the character’s own etymology, is on the 哈 surname page — and that lineage is the reason a Western name can borrow the character for a surname at all.

Because names in Chinese are chosen, not inherited by sound. 维 (wéi) reads the great rope that binds the corners of heaven — to hold, to uphold — and its own history runs: To hold together, to bind — and the rope a net-rides on at the corner, the one that keeps a square square. The character is 纟 beside 隹, a thread and a bird: something tethered, holding its shape. In long usage it became the verb of maintaining, 维持, which is the same idea: the thing is up only as long as the rope holds.

7 other names on this site carry at least one of the same characters — 大维 for David, 哈莉 for Hali, 哈柏 for Harper, 拉维 for Ravi, 莱维 for Levi, 维多 for Victoria, 维安 for Vivian. 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.

Harvey carries the sense Battle-worthy (Breton haeth, the burning hill). The Chinese name 哈维 answers it with 哈 (To breathe out, to laugh) and 维 (The great rope that binds the corners of heaven) — 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 哈维 — is in the section above.