弗兰克

The male name Frank is rendered in Chinese as 弗兰克. These characters are chosen for their sound, not their meaning — together they approximate how Frank is pronounced. In pinyin (the standard romanization of Mandarin) this reads Fú lán kè.

Character-by-character breakdown

In Chinese, Frank is written with 3 characters, each standing for one syllable of the sound: 弗 (Fú), 兰 (lán), 克 (kè). Each character here is a phonetic unit — picked for how it sounds, not for what it means — so read together they echo Frank rather than spelling out a literal meaning.

Origin & meaning of Frank

Frank is a name of Germanic origin. From the name of the Frankish people, meaning "free man."