William in Chinese: 卫良

William is written 卫良 in Mandarin (wèi liáng) — one character for the surname 卫 and one for the given name. The characters are chosen to carry the sound and the sense of William 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.

卫良 breaks down as 卫 (wèi) — To guard, to keep watch — the border that does not sleep; 良 (liáng) — Good, excellent — quality without ornament. The seal note we would put under it: A stubborn guard over good things.

Pinyin: wèi liáng — 卫 is tone 4 (a sharp fall, like a full stop); 良 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.

Yes. 卫 (wèi) is one of the recorded Chinese surnames. From Kang Shu, youngest duke of the Zhou and brother of kings, planted in the old Shang heartland at Zhaoge to hold the rebellious east; the state of Wei kept, in its name, the word for guard. His descendants took the state’s name when the Warring States swallowed it — 卫 has been a living surname for three thousand years. The full account, with the character’s own etymology, is on the 卫 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. 良 (liáng) reads good, excellent — quality without ornament — and its own history runs: From the old graph of a dancer: a person with a curving lower body, the foot lifted. The original meaning is the good, and the word travelled a long way to get there — 食 (food), 食粮, 糧, the character for grain, and therefore for abundance, all of it from a dancer.

1 other name on this site carries at least one of the same characters — 卫斯 for Wesley. 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.

Germanic will plus helmet — "resolute protector." Duke William crossed the sea in 1066, and every English crown since has worn his name; conquest's name, now on ordinary sons' lips. The full account — the etymology, the bearers, and why this site renders it as 卫良 — is in the section above.