Leo in Chinese: 李敖

Leo is written 李敖 in Mandarin (lǐ áo) — one character for the surname 李 and one for the given name. The characters are chosen to carry the sound and the sense of Leo 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.

李敖 breaks down as 李 (lǐ) — Plum tree; China’s most common surname; 敖 (áo) — To roam the wilds, free and untamed — the lion walking, not roaring. The seal note we would put under it: The lion, kept as a long stride rather than a roar.

Pinyin: lǐ áo — 李 is tone 3 (a dip down and back up); 敖 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. 李 (lǐ) is one of the recorded Chinese surnames. Of Ying blood, from a long line of judges of the Zhou era — the surname reads 理 (justice) until a family fleeing trouble took refuge in the plant 李 and let the character swap its crown for a tree. Li Er — Laozi, the old master of the Dao — carries it early; four centuries of Tang emperors claimed him as ancestor, and the surname has ranked first or second in China ever since. The full account, with the character’s own etymology, is on the 李 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. 敖 (áo) reads to roam the wilds, free and untamed — the lion walking, not roaring — and its own history runs: To roam, to wander out; the character draws a person on foot, and the graph is the footprint. The 楚 royal house took it as surname (熊敖), so the name has always meant a man who goes out. It is the verb under 遨游 — to wander far — and 熬 the endurance that comes of it.

1 other name on this site carries at least one of the same characters — 李 for Li. 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.

Latin for "lion." Thirteen popes and a flock of Byzantine emperors wore it; small in letters, brave in sound — the cartoon coward's name, worn by the lion that never stopped being himself. The full account — the etymology, the bearers, and why this site renders it as 李敖 — is in the section above.