Samuel in Chinese: 桑美

Samuel is written 桑美 in Mandarin (sāng měi) — one character for the surname 桑 and one for the given name. The characters are chosen to carry the sound and the sense of Samuel 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.

桑美 breaks down as 桑 (sāng) — The mulberry — the trees at the gate, the old home ground; also "sāng" of farewell; 美 (měi) — Beautiful — the great sheep: large, good, and true. The seal note we would put under it: A heard prayer in the trees at the gate.

Pinyin: sāng měi — 桑 is tone 1 (a flat, level pitch held high); 美 is tone 3 (a dip down and back up). 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. 桑 (sāng) is one of the recorded Chinese surnames. From the mulberry. The mythic top-knot says Shaohao made his capital at the Endless Mulberry, and the state of Qiongsang gave its people a shortened surname; a Qin courtier buried in the mulberry-grove (his master’s three sighs) was of this house. The character keeps the four hands of those who picked the leaf. The full account, with the character’s own etymology, is on the 桑 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. 美 (měi) reads beautiful — the great sheep: large, good, and true — and its own history runs: From 羊, the ram — a horned animal is beautiful, and the character is the animal wearing its horns. The judgment was made very early and never revised: strength wearing beauty. 美 is also the short form of the sense that made the word dangerous, since 美人 in classical Chinese means a beauty as in a beautiful man.

2 other names on this site carry at least one of the same characters — 娜美 for Naomi, 桑米 for Sami. 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.

Hebrew "God has heard." A prophet born of an answered prayer; two centuries of preachers, presidents and poets have signed the name — quietly, at the top of a page. The full account — the etymology, the bearers, and why this site renders it as 桑美 — is in the section above.