Olivia in Chinese: 欧丽薇

Olivia is written 欧丽薇 in Mandarin (ōu lì wēi) — one character for the surname 欧 and two for the given name. The characters are chosen to carry the sound and the sense of Olivia 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.

欧丽薇 breaks down as 欧 (ōu) — Phonetic for "O"; also the ancient Ou region — openness; 丽 (lì) — Beautiful, luminous; 薇 (wēi) — A fern-like herb of the classics, elegance in wild places. The seal note we would put under it: Three characters: a full classical four-character seal face.

Pinyin: ōu lì wēi — 欧 is tone 1 (a flat, level pitch held high); 丽 is tone 4 (a sharp fall, like a full stop); 薇 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. 欧 (ōu) is one of the recorded Chinese surnames. From the house of Yue: Ou Yu, son of the last king of Yue, put on the outland march and took title over the lands where Ou and Yu meet; his line at first wrote itself Ou-Yang (on the south side of Ou’s hill), and some of it simply kept the first half. Xiu — the Song essayist — was of the whole name. The full account, with the character’s own etymology, is on the 欧 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. 薇 (wēi) reads a fern-like herb of the classics, elegance in wild places — and its own history runs: A fern-like herb of the classics — the wild violet of Chu. The two Chuci lines that made it famous are both about picking it, and both are sad: the herb grows on the slope, the slope is being cleared, and something is lost on the day it is plucked. 芳 and 薇 together mean a fragrant weed, which was never a compliment.

22 other names on this site carry at least one of the same characters — 阿丽雅 for Aria, 艾丽 for Alice, 艾丽 for Elia, 艾薇 for Ivy, 欧瑞莉 for Aurelia, 嘉丽 for Caroline, 可丽珀 for Calliope, 莉丽 for Lily, and more. 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.

The feminine of Oliver, "olive tree." First recorded in Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, it has ranked among the world's most-chosen girls' names for a decade straight, on every continent at once. The full account — the etymology, the bearers, and why this site renders it as 欧丽薇 — is in the section above.