起亚

Kia is rendered as 起亚 (Qǐ yà) in Chinese. The characters mean 'rising Asia' — 起 means 'to rise/start' and 亚 means 'Asia'. This was a deliberate choice by Kia to give its Chinese name an aspirational pan-Asian meaning, rather than a purely phonetic rendering.

Character-by-character pronunciation

起亚 uses 2 characters to represent the brand name in Chinese. Each character contributes to the phonetic or semantic rendering.