Rowan in Chinese: 罗文

Rowan is written 罗文 in Mandarin (luó wén) — one character for the surname 罗 and one for the given name. The characters are chosen to carry the sound and the sense of Rowan 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.

罗文 breaks down as 罗 (luó) — Net, gauze — the phonetic Luo; 文 (wén) — Writing, pattern — civilization in strokes. The seal note we would put under it: The red rowan, written down.

Pinyin: luó wén — 罗 is tone 2 (a rising pitch, like the start of a question); 文 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.

Because names in Chinese are chosen, not inherited by sound. 文 (wén) reads writing, pattern — civilization in strokes — and its own history runs: A man (大, adult, arms wide) with crossed lines (交) on his chest: pattern — the crossed-stroke definition of the old gloss, body-paint before script. 错画也, says the Shuowen — and 纹 is what this letter became first, before literature borrowed the body.

4 other names on this site carry at least one of the same characters — 科文 for Cameron, 罗丝 for Rose, 欧文 for Owen, 紫罗 for Violet. 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.

Gaelic ruan, “little red one” — the mountain ash planted over doorways against bad luck, berries like small fires. Unisex, evergreen, and climbing the charts on both sides of the ocean. The full account — the etymology, the bearers, and why this site renders it as 罗文 — is in the section above.