How international luxury brands translate their names for China

They say that there is power in names and nowhere is that truer than China, where Chinese characters often carry a deep significance. For any brand planning to enter the Chinese market, choosing the right Chinese name is usually a top priority. While a clumsy translation might not necessarily make or break your business, it could certainly invite ridicule in China’s quick-to-judge online spaces and create the wrong sort of publicity for your brand.

In choosing their Chinese name, brands should consider something that is memorable, easy to pronounce and with no negative connotations in the multiple Chinese dialects, and that convey a sense of the brand’s DNA.

This can be a challenge for luxury fashion houses, as their name often comes with its own heritage and connotations that the brand needs to express in Chinese. However, they also have the advantage that they may already enjoy a certain degree of brand recognition in China. On the other hand, fast fashion brands or brands that are just entering the Chinese market need to come up with a name that will immediately resonate with Chinese consumers.

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Generally speaking, brands have three main options when it comes to choosing a Chinese name. The majority opt for a simple transliteration, choosing a series of characters with sounds that closely mimic the pronunciation of the brand’s original name. For example, Dior’s Chinese name is 迪奥 (di ao). The two characters, while meaningless in combination, respectively mean “to enlighten” and “mysterious,” a smart choice for an aspirational brand.

Take, for example, American fast fashion retailer Forever 21, whose Chinese name 永远二十 一 (yongyuan ershiyi) means just that.

The most popular and often best received method of naming is a combination of transliteration and carefully selected characters. The oft-cited best example of this practice is Chanel or 香奈儿 (xiang nai er) in Chinese. As brand translation expert Feng Xiuwen points out in his book On Aesthetic and Cultural Issues in Pragmatic Translation, the first character of the name, 香 (xiang), means fragrant, an appropriate choice for the creator of one of the world’s most iconic fragrances, Chanel No. 5. The second and third characters, 奈 (nai) and 儿 (er), while phonetic representations of the original French pronunciation, imply a soft femininity that suits the Chanel brand.

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Since more and more Chinese people are travelling abroad extensively and some speak excellent if not fluent English, brands might wonder whether it is even necessary to spend considerable time and energy coming up with a Chinese name, apart from for legal and administrative purposes. Indeed, as Chloe Reuter, founder and CEO of Shanghai-based integrated communications agency Reuter Communications, points out, there is no need to pander to Chinese consumers, particularly those who already understand and appreciate fashion.