麦当劳

McDonald's Chinese name 麦当劳 (Mài dāng láo) is a phonetic rendering. The characters mean 'wheat/barley', 'should/proper', and 'toil/labor' respectively — the combination sounds like 'McDonald' without carrying a unified meaning. It is one of the most recognized fast-food names in China.

Character-by-character pronunciation

麦当劳 uses 3 characters to represent the brand name in Chinese. Each character contributes to the phonetic or semantic rendering.