Max in Chinese: 麦思

Max is written 麦思 in Mandarin (mài sī) — one character for the surname 麦 and one for the given name. The characters are chosen to carry the sound and the sense of Max 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.

麦思 breaks down as 麦 (mài) — Wheat — bread, the daily strength; 思 (sī) — To think, to reflect — the mind at work. The seal note we would put under it: Bread and thought: the two hungers.

Pinyin: mài sī — 麦 is tone 4 (a sharp fall, like a full stop); 思 is tone 1 (a flat, level pitch held high). 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. 麦 (mài) is one of the recorded Chinese surnames. An old surname of the western reaches — the state of Mai stood in the Longxi land of today’s Gansu at the beginning of the Han, and its people took its name when the garrisons swallowed the land; a famous Mai of the Tang held the border for forty campaigns. The character is 來 — the coming wheat — which China’s first grain used a stranger’s name for. The full account, with the character’s own etymology, is on the 麦 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. 思 (sī) reads to think, to reflect — the mind at work — and its own history runs: From 田 over 心, a field over a heart — the charist of the field and the organ of thought, in that order. The Book of Songs put it where a homesick man is thinking of home, and the two senses never separated: to think is to farm something, and what you farm is your own field.

5 other names on this site carry at least one of the same characters — 鹤思 for Heath, 诺思 for North, 思琦 for Sky, 思诺 for Snow, 韦思特 for West. 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 "the greatest" — a whole boast in three letters. Cinema tycoons, heavyweight champions and one road-warrior of cult legend all signed it: full volume, no apologies. The full account — the etymology, the bearers, and why this site renders it as 麦思 — is in the section above.