So as a fun little exercise for myself, I would like to offer my substandard Mandarin knowledge to transliterate your characters’ names into Chinese!
I can do both given names and surnames. Foreign given names are almost always transliterated phonetically. Surnames may be phonetic (Wrynn is 乌瑞恩, or wū ruì ēn) or translated literally if it is a compound word (Stormrage is 怒风, nù fēng, or “raging wind”)
I will try my best at Pandaren names, but it will be more difficult for as I will have to ascribe meaning to it. I am definitely open to feedback from someone more proficient in Chinese when I transcribe Pandarian names.
I will be using simplified characters, and will also provide Latin character pinyin. If you wish to hear it pronounced, Google Translate has a text-to-speech engine.
To start off, Za’tiya is 扎帝娅.
Addenum: Also, please make a note of your character’s gender if the name isn’t obvious.
EDIT: My Chinese is a lot better now in 2025. Woo~
I think my character’s name is Black Arrow (can never trust those free sites all the time), but I settled on Longspirit as his family name. I’m not quite sure if I want to give him a different last name since he’s been his own person for so long, but I’ll leave that be for now. He is a male if that helps you out in any way.
As always to people who do this sort of thing, thank you!
I love doing the same! Especially with my few non-Pandaren characters. It’s great fun to try and give them phonetically similar Mandarin names with genuine meanings behind them.
For instance: I gave my Gnome (previously a rogue that became a monk in Mists), Ardo, a Mandarin name of 二道/Erdao, which can be translated as “Second Path”. More a nickname than anything, of course, but felt fitting because of his reformation. And my Tauren Dawnchaser Sunwalker, Matogi, is 冒头给/Maotougei which can mean “to take initiative”.
I know it’s taking a small liberty to correlate Pandaren names with Mandarin ones, but I feel it’s too awesome an opportunity to pass up. Especially for non-Pandaren monks and those heavily associated with Pandaren/Pandaria in their character’s personal lore.
… Then of course my Pandaren simply have Mandarin names in homage to who they are as a character.
Edit: Sorry for going on a monologue in your thread, I just love that other folks do this.
May I request No’groc slagmolder? Male by the way.
Man I really gotta look over these posts more before I respond so I don’t edit my grammar a million times
Jiantou Longspirit - 广灵箭头 (guǎnglíng jiàntóu)
[Jiantou means arrow from my understanding, no mention of any color. Guangling translates roughly to “vast spirit”]
It’s absolutely okay! I’m actually glad you’re here, because then you can spot me if there’s a better transcription.
As for giving non-Pandaren name meanings, I salute you. I’m not quite there yet with my written Chinese skills. (though I hope to be some day!) Either way, I believe it’s the industry standard to phonetically transcribe most fantasy names, so at least I get a pass there.
Sint Dagon. Female, but I think you knew that already.
Saint in Dutch and the name of an ancient Philistine Merman God of Grain and Agriculture. So, Saint of Harvest or Saint of Fertility are some interesting versions of the whole name.
This cool. So names are below. They a pun off Silver. Think like DBZ Goku other name is Kakarot which is a pun off Carrot. So if the names below can’t translate, Silver works.
Jiantou means more like “arrowhead”, but it works if you give him the family name Hei, which means “black”. Could also change it to Heijian 黑箭 (although that’d literally give you the DC villain in Mandarin). Then maybe Tou could be the family name since there are Pandaren shown to have family name at front and back in-game.
Examples: 黑箭頭 (Hei Jiantou/Heijian Tou)
Only issue with this is I don’t think there are any Chinese examples of a family name of Hei nor Tou, but I could be wrong. And that hardly bears any relevance in Warcraft.
Easy – 練師鋼掌 (Lianshi Gangzhang) or 練師金掌 (Lianshi Jinzhang)! The former meaning literally “steel” and the latter meaning more like “gold”.
I’ll leave the phonetics to the OP and just tell you their name would be 銀葉道 (Yin Yedao) as a direct translation of the meaning itself!
IMPORTANT NOTE! These are the Traditional (Taiwanese standard) Chinese characters! But the romanization is Hanyu Pinyin.
