Liu in Chinese: 刘

Liu is written 刘 in Mandarin. The characters are chosen to carry the sound and the sense of Liu 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.

刘 breaks down as 刘 (liú) — An ancient axe-weapon; the surname of the Han dynasty founders. The seal note we would put under it: Han imperial surname.

Pinyin: liú — 刘 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. 刘 (liú) is one of the recorded Chinese surnames. From the line of Emperors Yao, through Liu Lei, who tamed and reared dragons for the Xia court and was granted the appellation Dragonkeeper. His descendants took 刘; when a man from Pei called Liu Bang took the Qin and raised the Han, the surname became the dynasty’s and then the nation’s. To this day it is one of the four most common Chinese surnames. The full account, with the character’s own etymology, is on the 刘 surname page — and that lineage is the reason a Western name can borrow the character for a surname at all.

刘 is built from 刘 — 刘 (liú) — and no other curated name on this site shares that combination, because each entry is built around its own sound and its own meaning rather than recycled syllables. Names that start the same way as Liu are linked at the foot of this page.

Chinese surname 刘 — the imperial name of the Han dynasty: Liu Bang rose from a village constable to found four hundred years of empire, and every Chinese calls themselves "sons of Han" after his people. "Law" in Cantonese, "Lau" in Hakka. The full account — the etymology, the bearers, and why this site renders it as 刘 — is in the section above.