Joseph in Chinese: 若瑟

Joseph is written 若瑟 in Mandarin (ruò sè) — one character for the surname 若 and one for the given name. The characters are chosen to carry the sound and the sense of Joseph 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.

若瑟 breaks down as 若 (ruò) — To resemble; the herb ruo — humility in classical diction; 瑟 (sè) — The se, the ancient zither of fifty strings — harmony many-voiced. The seal note we would put under it: Patience that adds, note upon note.

Pinyin: ruò sè — 若 is tone 4 (a sharp fall, like a full stop); 瑟 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. 若 (ruò) is one of the recorded Chinese surnames. A rare surname whose old water remembers the word for obeying the river bank: the marsh grass 若 — the same root as the lotus — grew where the state of Jiang’s line bent its name. In names on this site 若 mostly carries the sound of Ruth or Roger — China answering foreign names with the word for "as if." The full account, with the character’s own etymology, is on the 若 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. 瑟 (sè) reads the se, the ancient zither of fifty strings — harmony many-voiced — and its own history runs: From 珡 beside 必: a stringed instrument, one of the eight zither family, and originally much bigger and noisier than the guqin you know. The Book of Songs has twenty-three poems that end with her silk cords cut. 瑟瑟 is the word for the sound and, by extension, for a tight wind.

4 other names on this site carry at least one of the same characters — 福若丝 for Frost, 瑟拉 for Sela, 瑟莲 for Selene, 瑟瑞娜 for Serena. 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.

Hebrew "he will add." The dreamer sold into Egypt, the carpenter who raised Jesus: a hundred popes and half of old Europe signed this name — and Joseph just keeps adding. The full account — the etymology, the bearers, and why this site renders it as 若瑟 — is in the section above.