Henry in Chinese: 亨利

Henry is written 亨利 in Mandarin (hēng lì) — one character for the surname 亨 and one for the given name. The characters are chosen to carry the sound and the sense of Henry 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.

亨利 breaks down as 亨 (hēng) — To get through, to thrive — the road unblocked; 利 (lì) — Sharp, keen, profitable — the edge that cuts well. The seal note we would put under it: Prosperity without a blocked road.

Pinyin: hēng lì — 亨 is tone 1 (a flat, level pitch held high); 利 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.

Yes. 亨 (hēng) is one of the recorded Chinese surnames. The second word of the Book of Changes’ finest line: 元亨利贞, the four virtues of the Creative — origin, growth (亨 here read hēng), accord, steadfastness. 亨 is prosperity in the sense of smooth passage, and the character’s top is the cooking-pot’s lid that lets the steam, the profit, out. The full account, with the character’s own etymology, is on the 亨 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. 利 (lì) reads sharp, keen, profitable — the edge that cuts well — and its own history runs: 刀 the knife over 禾 the grain head: to reap — and the reaped. 利 is the harvest’s edge, the harvest’s good, and the profit the ledger keeps.

3 other names on this site carry at least one of the same characters — 查利 for Charlie, 斐利 for Felix, 伊利 for Elizabeth. 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.

Germanic "home-ruler." Eight kings of France and two of England wore this name; it kept its crown for a thousand years, then quietly handed itself down to princes of the present day. The full account — the etymology, the bearers, and why this site renders it as 亨利 — is in the section above.