Opal in Chinese: 欧珀

Opal is written 欧珀 in Mandarin (ōu pò) — one character for the surname 欧 and one for the given name. The characters are chosen to carry the sound and the sense of Opal 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.

欧珀 breaks down as 欧 (ōu) — The ancient Ou region west of the passes; a real surname too — the open country, and the sound of O-; 珀 (pò) — Amber, the translucent stone — 琥珀, the fossilised resin the old texts rank with jade; and the second half of 欧珀, the word opal already has in Chinese. The seal note we would put under it: Two characters for one stone: 欧珀 is the name opal already carries in Chinese.

Pinyin: ōu pò — 欧 is tone 1 (a flat, level pitch held high); 珀 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. 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.

9 other names on this site carry at least one of the same characters — 欧瑞莉 for Aurelia, 可丽珀 for Calliope, 欧汀 for Austin, 欧信 for Ocean, 欧立 for Oliver, 欧丽薇 for Olivia, 欧雅 for Olya, 欧仁 for Oren, 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.

Opal carries the sense The jewel, the precious stone (Sanskrit upāla, through Greek). The Chinese name 欧珀 answers it with 欧 (The ancient Ou region west of the passes; a real surname too) and 珀 (Amber, the translucent stone) — chosen for sound and sense together, the way a Chinese parent chooses a name rather than the way a wire service transliterates one. The full account — the etymology, the bearers, and why this site renders it as 欧珀 — is in the section above.