Stella in Chinese: 斯特拉

Stella is written 斯特拉 in Mandarin (sī tè lā) — one character for the surname 斯 and two for the given name. The characters are chosen to carry the sound and the sense of Stella 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.

斯特拉 breaks down as 斯 (sī) — This — the demonstrative of poise; 特 (tè) — Singular, above the herd; 拉 (lā) — Toward — the light pulled to earth. The seal note we would put under it: A star named as fact.

Pinyin: sī tè lā — 斯 is tone 1 (a flat, level pitch held high); 特 is tone 4 (a sharp fall, like a full stop); 拉 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.

Because names in Chinese are chosen, not inherited by sound. 拉 (lā) reads toward — the light pulled to earth — and its own history runs: Not an old word at all, and the site’s only one of its kind: it was coined in the 1950s from 立 (to stand) and 扌 (the hand) for the physical act of tugging. Which makes it an unusually honest character — it means exactly what a hand does to a rope, and it borrowed the standing radical to do it.

27 other names on this site carry at least one of the same characters — 艾丝特 for Aster, 艾拉 for Ella, 芙拉 for Fara, 怀特 for Wyatt, 杰斯 for Jace, 卡拉 for Calla, 卡特 for Carter, 拉维 for Ravi, 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.

Latin for “star,” given to poetry by Spenser’s sonnets in the 1590s and to the century ever since. An astronomical fact used as a first name — no metaphor required. The full account — the etymology, the bearers, and why this site renders it as 斯特拉 — is in the section above.